How does Tom Clancy use imagery in The Hunt for Red October?

Imagery:

Despite her huge bulk, the October's crew accommodations would have shamed a gulag jailer. The crew consisted of fifteen officers, housed in fairly decent cabins aft, and a hundred enlisted men whose bunked were stuffed into corners and racks throughout the bow, forward of the missile room. The October's size was deceptive. The interior of her double hull was crammed with missiles, torpedoes, a nuclear reactor and its support equipment, a huge backup diesel power plant, and bank of nickel-cadmium batteries outside the pressure hull, which was ten times the size of its American counterparts."

"It was like being a cat burglar, hanging this close to an enemy submarine - no, not an enemy, not exactly - hearing everything. In better acoustical conditions, they could have heard conversations. Not well enough to understand them, of course, but as if they were at a dinner party listening to the gabble of a dozen couples at once."