Answer:
Summary: “The Man I Killed” begins with a list of physical attributes and possible characteristics of the man whom O’Brien killed with a grenade in My Khe. O’Brien describes the wounds that he inflicted. The man’s jaw was in his throat, he says, and his upper lip and teeth were missing. One eye was shut, and the other looked like a star-shaped hole. O’Brien imagines that the man he killed was born in 1946 and that his parents were farmers; that he was neither a Communist nor a fighter and that he hoped the Americans would go away.
Analysis: In “The Man I Killed” O’Brien’s guilt has him so fixated on the life of his victim that his own presence in the story—as protagonist and narrator—fades to the back. Since he doesn’t use the first person to explain his guilt and confusion, he negotiates his feelings by operating in fantasy—by imagining an entire life for his victim, from his boyhood and his family to his feeling about the war and about the Americans. His guilt almost takes on its own rhythm in the repetition of ideas, phrases, and observations. Some of the ideas here, especially the notion of the victim being a “slim, young, dainty man,” help emphasize O’Brien’s fixation on the effects of his action. At the same time, his focus on these physical characteristics, rather than on his own feelings, betrays his attempt to keep some distance in order to dull the pain.
Step-by-step explanation: