The Man I Killed

The chapter "The Man I Killed" and also "Ambush" showed to me the comparison of O'Brien before the war and during the war. It also shows the struggle that O'Brien is still dealing with: the regrets, the sorrow, the crude humor, the killing.

O’Brien describes the man he killed; the way he looked after the explosion and also his life. The way that O’Brien describes the man’s life--a life that O'Brien cannot prove-- is sort of a flash back for him. The way his life was or could have ended up. He talks about the man’s feelings towards war. The man didn’t want to go to war; he wanted to be a teacher of mathematics, a scholar, not a fighter. He keeps ‘hoping and hoping, always’ that he won’t have to fight. This relates to the chapter “On the Rainy River” where O’Brien fights with his internal feelings. He didn’t want to fight; he didn’t want to go to war. He even writes that he was interested in other things, a scholar in his own way. O’Brien felt that the war was not for him. I think this is coming out through his pain and emotions when he kills this man. This isn’t what he wanted to do. This man was just walking through the jungle, minding his own business, and yet O’Brien killed him.

Kiowa asks O’Brien, “You want to trade places with him?” This strikes fear into O’Brien. What if that was him? What if he was scattered in pieces in the jungle? In “Ambush” you can feel the tension that O’Brien has bottled away. He admits that his actions where just automatic; that he pulled the pin on the grenade and threw it because that’s what you do in war. Those actions don’t describe the character that O’Brien is, but his thoughts do. He admits he didn’t hate the man; he didn’t consider him an enemy. Even when he through the grenade it was because he just wanted the situation to end. He wanted to warn the man!