The imagery in of The President is very rich.  There are the motifs of eyes and wings, as well as some interesting personifications of sleep.  These images really flesh out the characters.  

The Judge Advocate is described as having “basilisk eyes”, which is only fitting given that nearly everyone upon whom he truly fixes his gaze meets an unpleasant end.  The trope of the Judge as a pitiless reptile makes him a larger-than-life figure and all the more effective for the purposes of this novel.  He is a man who goes out of his way to enforce the power of the regime and sees to feel no compassion whatsoever.  He is cold-blooded and deadly, and a little unrealistic – just like the basilisk.  In addition, the President’s eyes are described as being like mosquitos gorged with blood.  I prefer a pretty simple interpretation of this, being that the if a glance from the Judge Advocate can kill, than a look from the President feeds on what was alive.  

Angel Face’s dream segment is especially vivid.  The god of sleep sorting out all the arrivals to his domain into boats according to their driving emotion is a beautiful image and adds to the less realist side of the novel.  

In what is perhaps a less beautiful image, Asturias seems to compare sex to the slaughter of a chicken.  Angel Face and Camila make love interspersed with description of the chase and killing of a chicken.  The culmination of both events is as follows: “Camila shut her eyes … Her husband’s weight … A flapping of wings … A stain …”.   The hen dies, either by running into a wall or by the falling of the wall onto the chicken.  I’m no literary theorist, but it seems as though Asturias is hinting at the mutual complicity of Angel Face and Camila – no matter who does the dead, the wall or the hen, the deed is done.  Though Angel Face had much to do with Camila’s predicament, she is now just as deeply involved.