O'Brien truly seems scarred by this one man he "kills" in My Khe. He uses repetition of the same descriptive paragraph several times.
"He was a slim, dead, almost dainty young man of about twenty. He lay with one leg bent beneath him, his jaw in his throat, his face neither expressive nor inexpressive. One eye was shut. The other was a star-shaped hole," [page 124].
He was truly shaken up about this. He talks about it later on page 172 and says that he didn't actually kill this man physically, but he felt like he killed him. I think that's what he is saying atleast. This part really confused me...well I won't lie, a good majority of this book is confusing because O'Brien tries to explain that a true war story is never true, but it is always right. Or something along those lines.
Is this a metaphor for all those who died? He feels like he was in this war, connected to all kinds of people who were dead and were killing others. Since he couldn't stop the war himself, did he feel like it was his fault that so many people were killed? I am quite confused. Sometimes when I read books, I feel like I think much deeper than the author did when writing.
He uses repetition to show his shock from staring at this man he didn't even know. O'Brien felt like he killed this man, and he started going through the thought process that the man may have had before entering the war. The repetition establishes that even though he has seen death multiple times, it never becomes easy.
"He was a slim, dead, almost dainty young man of about twenty. He lay with one leg bent beneath him, his jaw in his throat, his face neither expressive nor inexpressive. One eye was shut. The other was a star-shaped hole," [page 124].
He was truly shaken up about this. He talks about it later on page 172 and says that he didn't actually kill this man physically, but he felt like he killed him. I think that's what he is saying atleast. This part really confused me...well I won't lie, a good majority of this book is confusing because O'Brien tries to explain that a true war story is never true, but it is always right. Or something along those lines.
Is this a metaphor for all those who died? He feels like he was in this war, connected to all kinds of people who were dead and were killing others. Since he couldn't stop the war himself, did he feel like it was his fault that so many people were killed? I am quite confused. Sometimes when I read books, I feel like I think much deeper than the author did when writing.
He uses repetition to show his shock from staring at this man he didn't even know. O'Brien felt like he killed this man, and he started going through the thought process that the man may have had before entering the war. The repetition establishes that even though he has seen death multiple times, it never becomes easy.
July 7, 2010 at 10:32 PM
the key is when he talks about "story truth" and "happening truth"