Tuesday, October 8, 2013

"The Man I Killed" by Lauren Herring


In “The Things They Carried” in the chapter “The Man I Killed” Tim O’Brien is forced to kill a Vietnamese soldier.  Tim feels terrible at it and he just keeps staring at the body. In Tim’s mind he just keeps wondering about who the man he killed is and what he was like.

            In the beginning of “The Man I Killed” Tim is describing what the man he killed looks like now. “ His jaw was in his throat, his upper lip and teeth were gone, his one eye was shut, his other eye was shaped like a star-shaped hole, his eyebrows were thin and arched like a woman’s, his nose was undamaged, there was a slight tear at the lobe of one ear, his clean black hair was swept upward into a cowlick at the rear of the skull, his forehead was lightly freckled, his  fingernails were clean, the skin at his left cheek was peeled back in three ragged strips, his right cheek was smooth and hairless, there was a butterfly on his chin, his neck was open to the spinal cord and the blood there was thick and shiny and it was this wound that killed him.” Tim O’Brien goes into such detail about the man he killed because he can’t get it out of his head because he feels so guilty. Kiowa keeps telling Tim that he has to stop staring at the body and that they need to go, but Tim just wants to stare at the body.  Throughout the chapter Tim keeps thinking of different scenarios of who the man he killed was and what his life was like. I think this really only makes Tim feel worse because it makes him think about what the man lost and people who have lost him. This chapter had a lot of detail about everything and it really made it more interesting and I felt like I was there with Tim O’Brien.

            A story I related “The Man I Killed” to was  “Charlie St. Cloud”.  In “Charlie St. Cloud” two brothers get in a car accident and only one survives. Charlie the oldest brother flatlined but he survived, Sam the younger brother however doesn’t survive. This changes Charlie whole life, he stopped hanging out with friends, he didn’t go to college, and he didn’t act the same. Like Tim O’Brien with the other soldier, Charlie can’t get the death of his brother out of his head. Both of them feel very at fault for this, in Tim O’Brien’s case he really did kill the Vietnamese soldier and in Charlie St. Cloud’s case he didn’t kill his brother but he feels like it was his fault. Neither one of them should feel like they did something wrong because there was nothing they could do.

“The Man I Killed” was a very interesting story that had really captivating details. I think the biggest theme here is that you can’t blame yourself for something you had no control over. Both of these characters let themselves feel at fault when they did nothing wrong. “The Man I Killed” gave you a more personal look at the way men in war may feel when they are forced to kill someone.


8 comments:

  1. I liked your comparison to Charlie St. Cloud because it was such a recent movie. Also your analysis of the situation is a really well done, I like the way in which you addressed guilt in your concluding paragraph. Great job on the post Lauren!

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  2. Great way to compare it to Charlie St. Cloud. It allowed me to have a better understanding of it. I also think your description of the long extensive details Tim uses to show how bad he feels about killing someone really emphasize the significance the death of this person on Tim's life.

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  3. Great analysis, Lauren! I like how you explore the guilt O'Brien feels with that of Charlie in "Charlie St. Cloud." However, I think O'Brien's exaggerated description of the life the boy could have lived before and after he was killed exhibits something else as well. To me, the nature and description of the boy is very similar to that of Tim O'Brien himself. They are both afraid of the war and are fundamentally against the very concept. O'Brien sees the man he killed as having a desire to study math; to me, this reflects O'Brien's own desires for his life after the war.

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  4. I really like this comparison, Lauren! (I posted some other stuff in sticky-notes on Diigo as well)

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  5. I really liked the comparison between "Charlie St. Cloud" and TTTC because of the loss of youth. There really is a deep meaning to each of these and you did on excellent job of capturing it. Your overall analysis was very good as well. Also, your conclusion is very good and the idea that one should not blame themselves unnecessarily resonates with me. Great job!

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  6. I liked the comparison you used, and I can totally see how the two stories are relatable. I also liked how you ended it by saying that they should not feel so guilty because there was really nothing they could have done to change the outcome, and even though this is true, it does not change the fact that they will always feel badly about it. Good connection and good blog post!

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  7. Lauren, I liked how you addressed the fact that after traumatic events, it is in human nature to never forget, and to play the situations over in our heads until we can almost no longer function (as shown by Tim's inability to talk and Charlie's newfound reclusive attitude). Good job connecting the two.

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  8. I also think that Tim should’ve just walked away rather than staring at the badly beaten body. The details that Tim O’Brien uses makes us build a relationship with the dead man, and so we feel bad for him when he dies. Both in Charlie St. Cloud and The Things They Carried the writers make the dead people seem innocent which is another reason why we feel bad for them. Awesome post!

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