Things They Carried Mary Anne Essay

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O'Brien illustrates the wide array of emotions experienced during war with "Ambush" and "The Man I Killed." Emotions and perspectives of war and death change with exposure to war and death. In "Ambush," war and death seem casual as the speaker tells us how the sees the young man walking and pills the pin on the grenade because he was afraid. He writes, "I did not hate the young man: I did not see him as the enemy" (132). The image before him on the trail is something vague, like a part of the morning fog but the soldier's instincts kick in before he has time to think. He kills the man without even thinking about it because he was "afraid of something" (131). In "The Man I Killed," the death of the enemy is suffocating because it is so shocking.

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To have killed a man is more than the soldier can bear. In "Ambush," things change as acts of war become automatic as demonstrated when the speaker admits the matter is not a "matter of live or die" (133). It simply is and there is no reason behind it. In "The Man I Killed," nothing is automatic; the speaker is frozen, thinking of the dead man's life. He images the act of fighting "frightened him. He was not a fighter. His health was poor, his body small and frail. He liked books. He wanted someday to be a teacher. He hoped that Americans would go away" (125). The dead man in "Ambush" "would've died anyway" (133) while the dead man in "The Man I Killed" "could not make himself fight" (127). These images illustrate how living with enough.....

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