Tim O’Brien talks about death in different ways. In the second vignette he makes a statement about the death of a soldier’s puppy. He says, “Ted Lavender adopting an orphan puppy- feeding it from a plastic spoon and carrying it in his rucksack until the day Azar strapped it to a Claymore antipersonnel mine and squeezed [...]

Comrades: Yet another word we use without understanding the etymological significance. Tim has comrades; Henry has comrades. Check out this definition and etymology at Dictionary.com and compare that with Henry’s relationship to his comrades in the first fifteen chapters and O’Brien’s interrelationship of characters (especially in “Friends and Enemies”). Pay particular attention to the way [...]

This chapter explores the idea of “traditional heroism”. Tim O’Brien presents starts the chapter off by saying that he is telling a story that he has “never told anyone” because it would cause “embarrassment” (39) He tells about himself being drafted into the war. At first he sticks around and gets a low-paying job at [...]