"After the red round eye of the sun had stared at the little plain and its burden, darkness, a sable mercy, came heavily upon it, and the wan hands of the dead were no longer seen in strange frozen gestures."

"The Little Regiment." Stephen Crane, 1897.

In this sentence, Crane uses figurative language to

A. establish the theme.
B. develop the characters.
C. emphasize the setting.
D. make significant contrasts.