In Chapter 13 of The Sympathizer, Viet Thanh Nguyen uses several literary devices including metaphor, simile, personification, symbolism, contrast, and irony. Let's look at each of these.

As the narrator sits down next to Sonny, he feels “an anaphylactic reaction to his presence.” Here is an excellent metaphor that shows us exactly how the narrator feels about Sonny. Just being next to him is like having a severe allergic reaction. Notice how much more vivid this is than simply saying that he dislikes Sonny.

Simile appears when the narrator notes that Ms. Mori's bookshelves bow “as the backs of coolies.” Personification is prominent in the cat, which the narrator thinks dislikes him. He is projecting his ideas about Sonny and Ms. Mori onto the cat, who probably does not care one way or the other.

We see symbolism in the vodka when the narrator speaks of not knowing the reality of it until one drinks it. This is also true of human beings. One does not know the reality of them either until one becomes intimate, and even then sometimes the reality remains hidden.

Now let's turn to the specifically marked passage. The passage is about Ms. Mori's brother Abe who was a conscientious objector during World War II and has since moved to Japan. We notice contrast here. Abe is not fully American and not fully Japanese. He is suspended somewhere in between. There is irony, too. He has always been told to “go back to his people,” but when he does, they do not accept him. There is also a hint of a flashback into Abe's past experience, a continuation of his story. Notice, too, the parallelism in the line “To them he's one of us, and to us he's one of them.” This passage provides a nice bit of pathos as well, as our emotions are touched by Abe's predicament. Finally, we might identify understatement. Abe is definitely not any happier. In fact, he is probably still angry and miserable.