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A summary of “The Man I Killed” in Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried. Learn exactly what happened in this chapter, scene, or section of The Things They Carried and what it means. Perfect for acing essays, tests, and quizzes, as well as for writing lesson plans.
O'Brien describes a Viet Cong soldier whom he has killed, using meticulous physical detail, including descriptions of his wounds. Then O'Brien imagines the life story of this man and imagines that he was a scholar who felt an obligation to defend his village.
The story begins with a description of the dead man: jaw in his throat, one eye shot the other forming a star-shaped hole, thin womanly eyebrows, undamaged nose, neck open to see his spine--this was the wound that killed him. He lay on his back, dead, in the middle of the trail.
“The Man I Killed” employs the narrative form of a confession. The very title is almost a confession; it is a very slight variation on “I killed a man.” The story is a form of self-flagellation: O’Brien forces himself to stare at the corpse as punishment.
Study with Quizlet and memorize flashcards containing terms like Why did Henry Dobbins continue to carry his girlfriend's stocking even after she broke up with him?, Consider the comparison O'Brien makes between Dobbins and America.
Jun 20, 2017 · The book depicts the men of Alpha Company: Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and the character Tim O’Brien, who survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer.
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Although the story is titled ‘The Man I Killed’, O’Brien’s narrator repeatedly emphasises the feminine qualities to the man’s ‘dainty’ appearance: his body is likened to that of both a woman and a child in the course of the story.