The Man I Killed

For this next blog, I thought that it would be good if I talked about my lit circle book and explore in a similar format of my Reader Response Lit Circle role of what I thought about the book and some quotes and passages that I felt really helped bring out some of the work’s major underlying themes. But first, I have to say that my lit circle book, The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, is tied for being my favorite book that we’ve read this year in AP Lit (it’s a tough call between this and Frankenstein) or all of my high school literature classes for that matter. I love how O’Brien has interwoven so many small stories following various characters in the past, present, and future, all of which connect together to bring out the trials afflicted on those who served in the Vietnam War, who deal with hardships not solely unique to war such as regret, lost, guilt, and pain, all of which help to bring out a greater commentary on the nature of this particular war and the brutal disillusionment surrounding it alongside the bitter repercussions that troubled everyone involved with it. One particular story that stuck out to me was “The Man I Killed”, which in a superficial overview is the telling of Tim O’Brien himself having thrown a grenade that left a young Vietnamese man with a “star-shaped hole that was red and yellow” (O’Brien. 120). While it is true that this incident is evidence toward O’Brien’s commentary on the ruthless violence of the Vietnam War that was a daily event for the soldiers humping along, that is only part of the commentary that leads toward understanding O’Brien’s overall themes. O’Brien interlaces the telling of his shock of having killed this man with telling the story of the Vietnamese man, who “was made fun of for his smooth skin and his love for mathematics. The young man could not make himself fight them...in the presence of his father and uncles, he pretended to look forward to doing his patriotic duty, which was also a privilege, but at night he prayed with his mother that the war might end soon. Beyond anything else, he was afraid of disgracing himself, and therefore his family and his village” (O’Brien. 121). This passage is critical in understanding O’Brien’s commentary about the war, because in this moment, he looks at the Vietnamese man and sees not only innocence compassion that has been tarnished by the sight of war, but also how someone an entire world away could have gone through the same exact circumstances and thought process that O’Brien himself had when he was drafted in 1968 for the war. O’Brien, like he does in many of the other stories, makes note of how this young man was just that: young, just like him and most other members of the Alpha Company who are fighting in the war. This was a war that was started by the authorities elders in political power seeking influence by proxy over others, but consumed the young, who as a result found their innocence stripped away from them and replaced by either unprecedented brutality of combat, or death itself. O’Brien makes the young Vietnamese man out to be a mirror image of himself, noting how the young man’s motivation of going to war for the sake of not so much patriotism, but fear of embarrassment and being judged and excommunicated by his family. For that, the young man would go to fight and find himself permanently excommunicated by the toss of a grenade by his feet. This section was also very important because it is the first time that the perspective of the other side is even speculated about. Up until this point, the Vietnamese had been more ambiguous and less easy to identify with. But here, O’Brien shows how the people that were killed were not native savages or alien invaders, but rather, just people who wanted in all their hearts to simply be at home with the people they love doing what they love most, but instead find themselves unwillingly fighting for a cause they don’t believe in.