The Man I Killed

The narrator in “The Man I Killed” is still O’Brien, but he tells it in the perspective of the actual character, not story teller. The many details that O’Brien reveals from the man he’s killed are related to his life, just like when O’Brien said the young man must’ve probably wanted to pursue an intellectual career, so did O’Brien himself. He basically creates somewhat of a replica of his fear and his reasons for going to war, the shame he had of disappointing his loved ones, and his aspirations making them the dead man’s as well. How the dead man probably had planned a life for himself but then he was sent to war and that life disappeared. I think that O’Brien is giving all these details from the dead man’s life as a sort of self-punishment for killing him. O’Brien has ended the life of a man who could’ve had a happy one, not to mention someone who he has related to his own life. By relating the dead man’s life to his own, O’Brien is imagining his own death because he’s basically putting himself in the man’s shoes.  O’Brien comes up with the background of the man’s life, relating to some of the aspects of his own, to make his death an actual tragedy and torture himself because after all, he did take another human’s life.

              In addition, I think that by making the man’s life similar to his own, O’Brien is also comforting himself. The dead man could’ve turned out to be O’Brien instead of the Vietnamese soldier. Even though he is supplying his guilt by making up a life for the dead man, O’Brien realizes that life goes on despite the tragedy that has just occurred. By being alive and making the dead man’s life similar to his own, O’Brien is both punishing himself for killing another human being who was also scared of war and ashamed of not facing it, and celebrating life because he could’ve been in the dead man’s shoes.