How does Mario Vargas Llosa use imagery in The Challenge?

At the start of the story, the reader learns that there is a rumor that Gimp's lame foot bears a large scar (shaped like a cross) from a pig bite he received many
years ago. No one has actually ever seen this scar, but the rumor persists.

During the fight, it is dark. Julian, however, imagines "the Gimp sweating, his mouth shut, his little pig eyes aflame and blazing behind his eyelids, his skin throbbing, the wings of his flattened nose and the slit of his mouth shaken by an unconceivable quivering . . ." This imagery clearly casts the Gimp in the image of a pig; more specifically of a pig fearing for his life.