When we are scared, things rush through our mind. What am I going to do? What am I doing? Should I kill him? Should I wait for him to make a move? But then will he kill me? We lose our minds, and many times, we can’t hold ourselves back from a certain action because it is drilled into us in case of if a scenario was to happen. This is true in the case of O’Brien’s life during the Vietnam war. He was afraid, he pulled a grenade, and he killed a man. Tim O’Brien even said, “ It was entirely automatic. 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.” Technically, he didn’t even want to kill the man. Tim O’Brien was trained to and though he knew he shouldn’t have, he had a failure of consciousness. His mind told him not to, but his body just reacted. By the time his head concluded that he shouldn’t kill the man for any reason, his grenade was already thrown. You even know that he wish he hadn’t thrown it because years later, way after he was out of the marines, he still regrets it to the day. …show more content…
This way even if the other soldier acted up, O’Brien would have made the decision that he thought was right and forgave himself thinking that he made the right choice that any other human being with a heart would have made. We can exemplify that he had a failure of consciousness because of this knowing that his true feelings told him that it wasn’t a good idea, but his body just wanted him to throw the grenade, and he wasn’t able to take control because of the fear running through