The Man I Killed By Tim O Brien: An Analysis

​Darn Paul O’Connor, he just gets more and more interesting, doesn’t he? After writing about him throughout this chapter, I did just a little bit more researching into him. And boy, it gets better! Seriously. Remember how he said – well, first of all, let’s recount a bit. He told author David Lifton in 1979 that Kennedy “didn’t have any brains left…The wound in his head was terrific…eight by four inches…The wound was in the occipital-parietal area…clear up around the frontal area of the brain…the cranium was empty…” His story seemed to be consistent over the years. Yes, I said “seemed”. Ready for the big change? In the 1988 documentary The Men Who Killed Kennedy, apart from telling us everything he had claimed before, he said something quite

James Joyce’s short story, “The Dead” depicts characters that all are seemingly alive, yet, on the inside, are very much dead. The main character, Gabriel Conroy, is more concerned with himself and how he is perceived than anyone else. His conceited nature plays a major role in his epiphany at the end of the story. After his wife, Gretta, divulges her childhood to Gabriel and the first young man who ever loved her, Gabriel come to the realization that “he had never felt like that himself towards any woman but he knew that feeling must be love (p. 628). With Gabriel’s sudden epiphany, the issue the readers knew, but he did not, surfaced. Gabriel was dead inside and only cared about himself. Any form of love he ever gave was to himself to boost his own egotistical personality.

In this chapter, we know the story of Norman Bowker, he realizes when he return from the war, he has nowhere to go and he can’t forget about the war. By telling the story about Norman Bowker after getting back from the war. “ Norman Bowker smiled. He looked out across the lake and imagined the feel of his tongue against the truth. "Well, this one time, this one night out by the river ... I wasn't very brave."(4) this show Norman Bowker try to distract himself by talking to his father try to forget about the war but the only thing he can talk is about the war. Even he try a different way “Here, Norman Bowker would have squinted against the low sun. He would have kept his voice cool, no self-pity "But the worst part," he would've said quietly,

Everyday men and women die in the most brutal way possible away from their family either killed from gun shots or landmines and they do come back. But in caskets, as images like these emphasize the destruction of war and these snaps just show the side effects of humankind's worse anger being shown. In the Article “The Stranger in the Photo Is Me”, Donald M. Murray expresses how harsh it really was in the war and how it changed himself forever and not in a good way. Not to mention, that he describes the way he felt ready to go to war, maybe even excited, but he wishes that horror on no one “I would not wish for a child or grandchild of mine to undergo the blood test of war” as the sacrifice these men and women go through is undeniably tremendous

Norman Bowker keeps his thoughts to himself, because of his difficulty expressing his emotions. He could not find the words to show and tell others how he felt from his experiences from the war. In doing so Bowker carries all the damage that war can do to a man during and after the war. The crucial healing process that includes telling one’s stories and thoughts of the war was something he could not do properly. Bowker had a possible chance of some therapy through the story in the book from O’Brien, but the story is not told in the correct way to Bowker’s true feelings, and leads to his emotional burdened death.

The power of the story has been very much a part of the lives of humans throughout time. The story is able to bring the past to the present and the dead to the living. The story can make the blind see. The story is able to make others feel for events in time that they have never experienced. The story has a profound effect on both the teller and the audience. As the audience is thought to be the beneficiary or the storytelling process, the teller is able to relive the times of old, or even teach a valuable lesson to his or her audience. Thus, allowing both parties to gain something intangible throughout this process. In “The Lives of the Dead,” O’Brien conveys the importance of storytelling and imagination by suggesting that the dead can be brought back to life in the minds of the people who hear it.

The Man I Killed is the story of the man that Tim O’Brien killed. However, this story is not true. He later mentions that he did not in fact kill the man, yet he was present and that was enough. This story, according to him, is told to show the reader how he feels, because O’Brien feels as though the truth is that by doing nothing, he killed the man, so in his story, he does kill the man. Imagery is the biggest literary device seen in this story, but diction also helps make the story seem more true, it helps the reader to truly believe that O’Brien did in fact throw the grenade that killed the man. This story is told from O’Brien’s point of view, which would be first person, despite the fact that the word “I” is

In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, he emphasizes a chapter on “The Man I Killed”, which describes the characteristics of a young Vietnamese man in which O’Brien may or may not have killed with a grenade. The novel is not chronologically sequenced, which leaves more room for the reader to engage in a critical thought process that fully bridges the author’s mind to their own. In O’Brien’s chapter, “The Man I Killed”, he attempts to humanize the enemy in a way that draws little separation between the enemy and himself by relating the enemy’s life prior to the war to his, and illustrates the war through the eyes of the soldiers who fought it.

Usage of imagery in The Things They Carried is what introduces a reader to the emotion that was felt by O'Brien. In this novel, imagery goes hand in hand with repetition. In The Man I Killed, O'Brien is constantly repeating the image of the boy that he killed in his mind, which allows the reader to get a clear view of the boy. This is only a story-truth, it is true to the reader because that is simply what we are told to picture. Imagery is important because it describes the setting and place, and what importance that played in the big picture of O’Brien’s war. Even though it is not the exact truth, it expressed truth in the form of emotion. The emotion that his images create in us is similar to the emotion that O'Brien felt at the time of the event.

At the same time, O’Brien struggles with destructiveness of the conflicting images of violence and peace in death through the juxtaposition of the imagery of the dead man. While “his one eye was shut, the other eye was a star-shaped hole.” The dead man has one shut eye that resembles a peaceful sleep, while the other side is obliterated by the grenade into a star-shaped hole. The image of the star-shaped hole in the dead soldier’s eye represents the hopes that he once had when he was alive: “He hoped the Americans would go away. Soon, he hoped. He kept hoping and hoping, always” (119). Furthermore, “his right cheek was smooth and hairless,” an image of untouched innocence that contrasts with his left cheek, which was “peeled back in three ragged strips,” destroyed by the violence O’Brien inflicts upon it. The juxtaposition of the butterfly that settles on his chin and the fatal wound on his neck, “open to the spinal cord…blood…thick and shiny” illustrate the complexity and ambiguity of the unnaturalness of war, depicted by the image of the dead man’s wrung neck, contrasted with the ironic peace and naturalism of death in the image of the fragile butterfly. These select images are also those that O’Brien chooses to fixate upon and develop throughout the chapter as he struggles to comprehend the moral implications of his actions. The innocence of the “slim, dead, almost dainty young man” is further reinforced when O’Brien describes his wrists as “wrists of a

“This is true.” (O’Brien, 420) – with this simple statement which also represents a first, three-word introductory paragraph to Tim O’Brien’s short story, “How to Tell a True War Story”, the author reveals the main problem of what will follow. “Truth” – when looked up in a dictionary, we would probably find definitions similar to sincerity and honesty on the one hand, and correctness, accuracy or reality on the other hand. When looking at these definitions, one can make out two groups of meaning: While sincerity and honesty are very subjective, correctness or accuracy are supposed to be objective by nature. One can be sincere and still not report the truth, due to the simple fact

O’Brien’s use of imagery allows him to paint a vivid depiction of the horrors experienced by the foot soldiers in Vietnam. These horrors perpetuate the physical and emotional

Tobias Wolff uses imagery in his short story “Bullet in the Brain” provides a visual portrait that captures attention. He clarifies in an interview with Sanford University what short stories require, “You want large results from it, and you 're compelled by its very shortness to using all your resources of language, form and understanding” (Schrieberg 1998). He uses language in the story offering instances of imagery to describe the media critic. Anders is portrayed as weary, and elegantly savage in his reviews. In each scene of the story Anders observes and uses biting words to offer his approval or distaste. He uses words to critique events while waiting with the customers at the bank, with the thieves and with the shot starting his recollections. There is a deeper vision into his brain not only with the speeding bullet but incite to words. The use of imagery in the short story provides a distorted image of the character Anders, not the real image of a man with the passion for words and the happiness they create.

In the novella The Body, author Stephen King makes an attempt to explain a story about losing innocence, only to be replaced by maturity and the corruption that comes with it. To do so, King revolves a story around a group of four boys who go on a life changing journey to find a dead body they heard about through the grape vine. Little did they know that pursuing this journey would eventually change them for the worse. In its entirety, the crux of the novella was to show how the experience of meeting death hands-on will pivot a person’s life and will either lead them onto a slippery slope or mold them in to a man soon to be. More specifically, King reinforces this theme beautifully by using light imagery during the

In the novel “The Things They Carried” by Tim O'Brien, there is a chapter by the name of “The Man I Killed.” Within this chapter, O'Brien narrates in one of his memories from the Vietnam War. The memory he depicts is of a Viet Cong soldier whom he has killed, using immense detail to describe the wounds.O'Brien imagines the life story of the Vietnamese soldier, envisioning that might have felt it was his duty as a citizen to protect the land and his people. While O'Brien is picturing the man's hopes and dreams, Azar interrupts his thoughts and makes a comment essentially congratulating O'Brien on killing the soldier, while Kiowa is more understanding and tells Azar to leave as he is aware that O'Brien is clearly upset. Kiowa tries to get O'Brien to stop staring at the dead man by offering justifications as to why he had to kill the man. O’Brien is still lost in his own head though, continuing to imagine the life the man could have had, had O'Brien not shot him. Kiowa continues to try to get O'Brien to talk but with to no avail.