Compare And Contrast Ambush And The Ghost Soldier

In The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien explores the contrast between who we are and what we do, especially in “Ambush” and “The Ghost Soldiers”. In these stories, O’Brien becomes separated from his own actions and makes choices that contradict what he knows to be his personal morals and values, demonstrating how the emotional toll of war can separate a person from their “true” self.

In “Ambush” (assuming the story is true), O’Brien recounts a time when he took the life of a young Vietnamese soldier who didn’t see O’Brien as he walked along a trail. O’Brien describes how the man posed no real threat to him, but something drove him to throw a grenade onto the trail. He was “afraid of [the man]– afraid of something”, but he could not identify

In “Ambush”, O’Brien has no real reason to fear the young Vietnamese soldier; he poses no threat to O’Brien’s safety, and yet a subconscious fear drives him to take the man’s life. In “The Ghost Soldiers”, O’Brien recognizes that the reasonable and logical decision would be to forgive Jorgenson, but something deeper inside him drives him to play the prank to get revenge. In both of these stories, O’Brien is separated from his own decisions in intense moments. His choices are driven by emotions: fear and anger. During war, soldiers are often exposed to traumatic situations that have serious psychological effects. The disconnect between O’Brien’s sense of self and his actions could be attributed to this emotional toll. O’Brien’s values and sense of self are clear in “On the Rainy River”, when he describes how he ended up in the war. In his late teens, O’Brien had no plans of going to the war– he felt almost immune to it, in a way. He planned to graduate college summa cum laude and complete his grad studies at Harvard. He says “I was no soldier. I hated Boy Scouts… I hated dirt and tents and mosquitoes. The sight of blood made me queasy, and I couldn’t tolerate authority, and I didn’t know a rifle from a slingshot.” (40). He did not support the war, but couldn’t qualify for CO status. Although O’Brien did eventually adapt to the war, many of his values likely stayed the

The psychological damage of war from exposure to so much grief, trauma, and suffering might cause a person to act differently, or make choices that they might not normally make. O’Brien is presented throughout the novel as a caring and sensitive person with a strong moral compass. I believe that this is partially represented through the interactions with his daughter, Kathleen. It is unclear whether she is real or not, but if she is not, it is possible that she represents O’Brien’s conscience. At the beginning of “Ambush”, O’Brien recounts a conversation with the nine year old Kathleen. She says “you keep writing these war stories, so I guess you must have killed somebody.” (125). O’Brien is torn, because he can’t bring himself to tell her the truth. In the end, he chooses to lie, but uses the rest of the story to imagine having a conversation with adult Kathleen and telling her the whole truth. This imaginary adult version of his daughter serves to help O’Brien process this experience. Later on, we learn that his morals and “liberal values” should tell him that killing the young Vietnamese soldier and playing the prank on Bobby Jorgenson are wrong, but the intense emotions caused by O’Brien’s experiences in the war drive him to make the choices he