ipl-logo

The Man I Killed By Tip Ibrien Analysis

718 Words3 Pages

Are you really stuck with quilt forever if you kill someone? This is a question some may ask. Some people have been faced or will be faced with some type of decision, and what they choose to do with that decision may decide the guilt they may have. The people who ask them self this question the most are the ones who defend our country, a soldier. Tim O 'Brien uses imagery and repetition in both “The Man I Killed” and “Ambush” to reveal that once a soldier kills someone, even if it was “a good kill”, the soldier will be stuck with quilt forever.
In “The Man I Killed” O’Brien uses repetition of imagery to convey the feelings of guilt he has by forcing himself to continuously stare at the corpse of the dead man, whom he had just killed. “His jaw was in his throat, his upper lip and teeth were gone, his one eye was shut, his other eye was a star-shaped …show more content…

In “Ambush” O’Brien conveys his everlasting guilt by stating “I did not hate the young man; I did not see him as the enemy; I did not ponder issues of morality or politics or military duty.” O’Brien also says “It was not a matter of live or die. There was no real peril. Almost certainly the young man would have passed by. And it will always be that way.” This quote is also showing O 'Brien 's intentions about not wanting to be in the war. Even though it was a soldier O 'Brien killed, he will always think of the man as being a regular man.
Throughout “The Man I Killed” and “Ambush” we are shown through Tim O’Brien’s first hand experience the regret soldiers can feel both immediately after the war and also many years later, reminding us that quilt is forever. The soldiers who fight for our country have hardship forever after being in the war and killing someone. The guilt the soldiers have is everlasting even if they try to forget it, but it will always be there. The soldiers in every war will have particular times of the war that will be on constant replay in their mind, and they will never let the quilt they

Show More
Related
699 Words | 3 Pages

McCain is correct when he means it does not matter how many times someone can hit or torture a soldier, but seeing soldiers apart of the squadron getting executed will harm the mind forever. Levin’s essay has some examples that may create an emotional bond. Levin’s article states “I’m sorry, you’ll have to die in agony, we just couldn’t bring ourselves to …” (Levin). Levin has some guilt for the American soldiers because they were tortured.

Read More
445 Words | 2 Pages

This quote is from O’Brien the author himself admitting that he couldn’t be brave enough to leave his country and that he was embarrassed of what he was trying to do. So, he told himself that he would go to war, kill and maybe die because of the embarrassment idea he made. The idea of this quote is to explain what he feeling/confusion between what he’d do. Should he go to war? Or should he leave his loved ones and country behind.?

Read More
604 Words | 3 Pages

He actually tries to do the same thing in the middle of the story “On the Rainy River”, he "slipped out of his own skin" and watched himself (much like Elroy did) in his attempts to decide whether he should escape to Canada. At the end of the chapter, however, the importance of the physicality of "O 'Brien" reemerges. O 'Brien was literally paralyzed as he tried to force himself from the boat. So it  shows that he had denied his own feelings and submitted to the stories of other people, like the older generation of veterans whom he despises, and to what he considered cowardice. At least until finally

Read More
1292 Words | 6 Pages

In the short story, “The Man I Killed,” O’Brien focuses on this to show that everyone fighting in a war has a story. He spends the story describing the man he killed and searching for justification of his actions. He carries around guilt with him because of it, and his fellow soldiers try to help him justify and come to terms with his action by saying things like, “You want to trade places with him? Turn it all upside down= you want that? I mean, be honest,” (126) and “Tim, it’s a war.

Read More
791 Words | 4 Pages

It is assumed that no one actually enlists with the sole purpose of killing people. This next short story is entitled “The Man I Killed.” Right off the bat, O’Brien goes into extremely gruesome details of the body of the boy he just killed. He describes the wounds for half of a paragraph. In this story, the reader can feel the guilt in the author as he stands on the trail, thinking about this boy’s life before he brutally murdered him.

Read More
423 Words | 2 Pages

1.Guilt is one of the worst things accompanied by death. Guilt plays a huge role throughout the novel. In war, men are constantly dying and these men all become best friends with one another. For example, Norman Bowker felt a tremendous amount of quilt towards the death of Kiowa.

Read More
730 Words | 3 Pages

The men who served in the Vietnam War were just barely men, some of them were just hitting the age twenty. It was the draft which brought these boys into the fight involuntarily, to fight a war which they saw no meaning in. Many of these boys are the sons of veterans who fought in World War II, that came home to parades and were held up like heroes for fighting. Honorary men of the country and the soldiers fighting for Vietnam did not want to disappoint them. Thus, when O’Brien mentions in the quote, valor was not the point, he is trying to explain to the reader that the men went like it was a job they had to do, not a random act of courage that willed them to proceed.

Read More
543 Words | 3 Pages

The Things They Carried, written by Tim O’Brien, illustrates the experiences of a man and his comrades throughout the war in Vietnam. Tim O’Brien actually served in the war, so he had a phenomenal background when it came to telling the true story about the war. In his novel, Tim O’Brien uses imagery to portray every necessary detail about the war and provide the reader with a true depiction of the war in Vietnam. O’Brien starts out the book by describing everything he and his comrades carry around with them during the war. Immediately once the book starts, so does his use of imagery.

Read More
757 Words | 4 Pages

O’Brien feels extremely guilty for killing someone. He is not sure what to do or how to feel. O’Brien does not exactly say if he was the man who actually killed him, or if someone else did. He hints that if it was not him that killed the poor man. Death has a way of changing a

Read More
813 Words | 4 Pages

O’Brien tells the readers about him reflecting back twenty years ago, he wonders if running away from the war were just events that happened in another dimension, he pictures himself writing a letter to his parents: “I’m finishing up a letter to my Parents that tells what I'm about to do and why I'm doing it and how sorry I am that I’d never found the courage to talk to them about it”(O’Brien 80). Even twenty years after his running from the war, O’Brien still feels sorry for not finding the courage to tell his parents about his decision of escaping to Canada to start a new life. O’Brien presented his outlook that even if someone was not directly involved in the war, this event had impacted them indirectly, for instance, how a person’s reaction to the war can create regret for important friends and

Read More
1504 Words | 7 Pages

This quote epitomizes the trauma caused by war. O’Brien is trying to cope, mostly through writing these war stories but has yet to put it behind him. He feels guilt, grief, and responsibility, even making up possible scenarios about the life of the man he killed and the type of person he was. This

Read More
1284 Words | 6 Pages

“How to Tell a True War Story” and “Ambush” are stories that both explore on topics: truth, the real definition of a true war story, and the role of truth. O 'Brien starts off “How to Tell a True War Story” with “This is true.” Starting this story with such a bold sentence not only makes it seem more true, but to some extent, it acts as a comfort statement to the narrator’s own doubts, as if there were unspeakable uncertainties and lies of the narrator. The title of this story also comes into play, with a meta-fictional name “How to Tell a True War Story”, as if it were a guide, a manual, having a true war story tell the readers how to tell a true war story. However ironically, towards the middle of the story, us as

Read More
688 Words | 3 Pages

He fought a war in Vietnam that he knew nothing about, all he knew was that, “Certain blood was being shed for uncertain reasons” (38). He realized that he put his life on the line for a war that is surrounded in controversy and questions. Through reading The Things They Carried, it was easy to feel connected to the characters; to feel their sorrow, confusion, and pain. O’Briens ability to make his readers feel as though they are actually there in the war zones with him is a unique ability that not every author possess.

Read More
925 Words | 4 Pages

O’Brien writes, “You can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil” (76). Regardless of the changes within the narrations, the fact remains, that these soldiers are in the middle of battle and the emotion that follows differ for each person. As Kaplan states in his writing, “the most important thing is to be able to recognize and accept that events have no fixed and final meaning and that the only meaning that events can have is one that emerges momentarily and then shifts and changes each time that the events come alive as they are remembered or portrayed”

Read More
845 Words | 4 Pages

This is evident when Mr. O’Brien says, “I would go to the war – I would kill and maybe die – because I was embarrassed not to,” (pg. 57.) In the end the author realized what he must do and went back home, so he could fight in the Vietnam

Read More

More about The Man I Killed By Tip Ibrien Analysis

Related Topics

Open Document