Rat Kiley’s platoon essentially understand and accept his decision as they know where Kiley is coming from. Lieutenant Cross even vouches for Kiley’s injury. The squadron essentially understand Kiley battles with larger tensions and stress than other soldiers as he has been on the warfront longer than most men in his platoon. Kiley has endured many deaths, considering his role as a medic. Kiley has constantly battled with the fear of death, considering his outcries on how he imagines his guts and liver oozing out like that of the soldiers he has tended to.
There are two phases to Kiley’s reaction: torturing a baby water buffalo and writing a letter to Lemon’s sister. The former conveys loss’ ability to corrode a victim’s mind, while the latter reveals a barrier between the soldiers and regular members of society. By
Rat Kiley weeps after these events unfold. After witnessing this O’Brien describes war as “hell, but that’s not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead.”
The person had to deal with death and the reality of war under the worst case scenario. Bob “Rat” Kiley was that soldier and one of the many soldiers that left something in the war. He had lost his friend Curt Lemon and that’s the first sign that the war has been turning to be painful for him. This coping mechanism for the death was to write letters to lemon’s sister and he shot a baby Water Buffalo. This coping mechanism is seen in the chapter “How to tell a true war story”, shows how he has been affected and explained the toll the war had taken on him.
Rat Kiley as a young soldier had never experienced things as serious as the Vietnam War and so has a rude awakening there that changes him a lot. In the chapter, “Night Life” Rat Kiley says, “And the thing is, it doesn’t scare me. More like curiosity. The way a doctor feels when he looks at a patient, sort of mechanical, not seeing the real person, just a ruptured appendix or a clogged-up artery” (211). Rat Kiley is shocked by his loss of innocence in the Vietnam War, thanks to the many scenes that he witnessed.
Therefore she pushed back her negative emotions and stresses, such as her fears, by thinking he wasn't trying hard enough. By doing so, she was transferring the blame, and or weight of being at fault, onto someone else to cluelessly make herself feel better. Although small, these two are prime examples of how fear affects and conducts the characters actions and feelings; no matter if it is on their own accord or
This new form of warfare had a huge psychological toll on the tunnel rats. The constant threat of danger paired with the uncertainty of what dangers lay ahead mentally drained the soldiers. Many soldiers had higher levels of stress and anxiety. Even with these challenges the tunnel rats demonstrated a great amount of resilience, determination, and commitment to their mission. Tunnel rats played a big role in the war by disrupting the enemy.
In Rat’s case he needed to explode a physical being. Rat Kiley needed to express the lost he felt when his best friend died. He needed to release the pain and rage he felt towards the war, and the best way to do that was to make the baby water buffalo suffer the way he felt he
She was so nervous because they were going to ask her about his death, so she took everything she had and
In a scene where Curt Lemon accidentally steps on a mine and is torn into many pieces, his closest comrade, Rat Kiley, has trouble grieving the loss of his friend. In a furious state, Kiley tortures a water buffalo. This scene represents the emotional and physical torture the men in Vietnam are subjected to. Both the soldiers in Vietnam and the water buffalo are in a position where their lives are out of their control. Just as the water buffalo was tortured to death, most of the men in Alpha Company feel helpless in their situation.
He was a combat medic. “As a medic, Rat Kiley carried a canvas satchel filled with morphine and plasma and malaria tablets and surgical tape and comic books and all the things a medic must carry” (Pg 5). He was the first to step up when something had to be done. Rat kiley was a very outgoing guy. When his best friend passed away
Rat Kiley, medic and soldier, who identifies as a savior of lives, but after one game gone wrong, he accidentally takes one. After passing a live grenade to Curt Lemon and killing him, Kiley “lost his best friend in the world,” and takes his anger on a water buffalo and goes “automatic. He shot randomly, almost casually”(O’Brien 75). Although this act of violence seems random, it shows the effects of death and how it comes up in different ways for these mentally tormented soldiers. After causing the death of his friend, Kiley couldn’t cope so he inflicted his anger onto the closest thing available.
For a moment, there is a chance Kikuji will find refuge in passivity towards her death. This is not the case considering he mentions that “worrying oneself over the dead—was it in most cases a mistake, not
In the book, this is what happens next, “Dr. Wyatt looked back out at us. Then his face split into a delighted smile… From Kayla burst a sound like nothing I had ever hear in this life. It was a wail, a moan, a shriek. It was one word: ‘Why?’
In the short story The Sniper by Liam O’Flaherty, a main theme is that war is cruel. This is supported by many details within the story. War makes people do things that they normally wouldn’t do, mostly because it is their duty to protect what they believe in or their country. For example, the
