The Things They Carried: The Man I Killed Summary & Analysis

The story begins with a description of the dead man: jaw in his throat, one eye shot the other forming a star-shaped hole, thin womanly eyebrows, undamaged nose, neck open to see his spine--this was the wound that killed him. He lay on his back, dead, in the middle of the trail. He was thin and bony with a sunken chest, not many muscles, "a scholar maybe." He was maybe born in 1946 in My Khe with farmer parents where some of his family and neighbors fought back against the French for independence. He wasn't a Communist, but a soldier and citizen. From youth, "the man I killed" would have listened to stories about heroic fighters for his country and how this was of the highest duty and privilege for a soldier. The man accepted, but he secretly was scared because he wasn't a fighter. He enjoyed books, wanted to teach math. At night he tried to picture himself as a brave soldier, like his father and uncles had been, or the men in the stories. He kept hoping the war would end.

Azar eggs O'Brien on, saying he "trashed that fucker." Kiowa steps in and tells Azar to go away. Kiowa tells O'Brien there's nothing else O'Brien could have done. He keeps repeating this, and urges O'Brien to stop staring at the corpse of the man he killed. Kiowa asks O'Brien if he'd prefer to be in the dead man's shoes. O'Brien keeps staring at the star-shaped hole. Kiowa comes back later tells O'Brien it's a war and he had no choice.

O'Brien describes the man's face again, repeats the same details: the undamaged nose, the frail figure. He notes the man had feared being a bad soldier—didn't want to be a soldier—he had worried about it even as a boy growing up. He loved math and was teased at school for his feminine eyebrows. The man could never fight his bullies, though he wanted to, and this made him feel ashamed. If he couldn't do this on the playground, how could he fight the Americans? Around his family he pretended to be brave and that he looked forward to fulfilling his patriotic duty, but he prayed with his mother every night that the war would end. Most of all, he was afraid of being a disgrace to himself, his family, and his village.

Kiowa tells O'Brien he knows that O'Brien feels awful, and then says maybe he doesn't know. O'Brien keeps staring at the body and describes the wounds on the dead man's corpse, he notes a gold ring on his right hand. Kiowa tells O'Brien again to stop staring. O'Brien notes how clean the dead man's fingernails were, notes again he was maybe a scholar. O'Brien describes how even though the man came from poverty, he would have continued his education as a math scholar attending the University of Saigon in 1964. The man spent all his time working and a lot of time alone. The man knew the war would kill him, but he refused to think about it as he studied. In his last year at university he fell in love with a girl who liked him back. Maybe they exchanged gold rings. But now the man was dead.

Kiowa covers the corpse with a poncho. Kiowa tells O'Brien that he seems like he's looking better. He tells O'Brien he just needed "some mental R&R." Then he says he's sorry, then asks O'Brien to talk about it. He keeps asking O'Brien to talk. The young dead man was about twenty, and he lay with a leg beneath him, his jaw in his throat, an inexpressive face, and a star-shaped hole in one eye. Kiowa tells O'Brien to "Talk."