When she was nine, my daughter Kathleen asked if I had ever killed anyone. She knew about the war; she knew I’d been a soldier. “You keep writing these war stories,” she said, “so I guess you must’ve killed somebody.” It was a difficult moment, but I did what seemed right, which was to say, “Of course not,” and then to take her onto my lap and hold her for a while. Someday, I hope, she’ll ask again. But here I want to pretend she’s a grown-up. I want to tell her exactly what happened, or what I remember happening, and then I want to say to her that as a little girl she was absolutely right. This is why I keep writing war stories: He was a short, slender young man of about twenty. I was afraid of him—afraid of something—and as he passed me on the trail I threw a grenade that exploded at his feet and killed him.
Or to go back: Shortly after midnight we moved into the ambush site outside My Khe. The whole platoon was there, spread out in the dense brush along the trail, and for five hours nothing at all happened. We were working in two-man teams—one man on guard while the other slept, switching off every two hours—and I remember it was still dark when Kiowa shook me awake for the final watch. The night was foggy and hot. For the first few moments I felt lost, not sure about directions, groping for my helmet and weapon. I reached out and found three grenades and lined them up in front of me; the pins had already been straightened for quick throwing. And then for maybe half an hour I kneeled there and waited. Very gradually, in tiny slivers, dawn began to break through the fog, and from my position in the brush I could see ten or fifteen meters up the trail. The mosquitoes were fierce. I remember slapping at them, wondering if I should wake up Kiowa and ask for some repellent, then thinking it was a bad idea, then looking up and seeing the young man come out of the fog. He wore black clothing and rubber sandals and a gray ammunition belt. His shoulders were slightly stooped, his head cocked to the side as if listening for something. He seemed at ease. He carried his weapon in one hand, muzzle down, moving without any hurry up the center of the trail. There was no sound at all—none that I can remember. In a way, it seemed, he was part of the morning fog, or my own imagination, but there was also the reality of what was happening in my stomach. I had already pulled the pin on a grenade. I had come up to a crouch. It was entirely automatic. I did not hate the young man; I did not see him as the enemy; I did not ponder issues of morality or politics or military duty. I crouched and kept my head low. I tried to swallow whatever was rising from my stomach, which tasted like lemonade, something fruity and sour. I was terrified. There were no thoughts about killing. The grenade was to make him go away—just evaporate—and I leaned back and felt my mind go empty and then felt it fill up again. I had already thrown the grenade before telling myself to throw it. The brush was thick and I had to lob it high, not aiming, and I remember the grenade seeming to freeze above me for an instant, as if a camera had clicked, and I remember ducking down and holding my breath and seeing little wisps of fog rise from the earth. The grenade bounced once and rolled across the trail. I did not hear it, but there must’ve been a sound, because the young man dropped his weapon and began to run, just two or three quick steps, then he hesitated, swiveling to his right, and he glanced down at the grenade and tried to cover his head but never did. It occurred to me then that he was about to die. I wanted to warn him. The grenade made a popping noise—not soft but not loud either—not what I’d expected—and there was a puff of dust and smoke—a small white puff—and the young man seemed to jerk upward as if pulled by invisible wires. He fell on his back. His rubber sandals had been blown off. There was no wind. He lay at the center of the trail, his right leg bent beneath him, his one eye shut, his other eye a huge star-shaped hole.
In “The Story of an Hour” Kate Chopin tells the story of Ms. Mallard, a woman with a heart problem. At the beginning of the story, Ms. Mallard’s husband’s friend Richard had heard that Ms. Mallard’s husband had supposedly died in a railroad accident, so her sister Josephine carefully breaks the news to her to ensure that her heart does not give her trouble from the shock. When she hears the news, Ms. Mallard goes to her room to be alone and sits at the window, sad at first. However, looking out at the world, she realizes that without her husband she would be happy, free, and independent. Eventually Josephine comes back, and Ms. Mallard goes with her down the stairs. She then sees her husband Brently, whom it turns out the train had not killed, walk in through the door. She immediately has a heart attack and dies, shocked by her happy new life taken away from her but what doctors thought to be “joy that kills” (Chopin). In this short story, knowledge turns out to be detrimental to Ms. Mallard. Originally her family and friends have “to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband’s death” because the knowledge would be too startling if she found out suddenly (Chopin). Then at the end of the story she does die because the knowledge of her husband being alive shocks her as she was happy to be free. Unlike most pieces of literature where knowledge is good and people want to gain it, “The Story of an Hour” describes a scenario where knowledge is harmful and too much too quickly killed the main character.
I found the description of how Josephine tells Ms. Mallard about her husband’s death especially compelling. When Ms. Mallard first hears, the news stuns her, and she cannot fully comprehend it. After a moment though, she does grasp what has happened and “[weeps] at once, with sudden, wild abandonment” (Chopin). Chopin makes Ms. Mallard’s burst of emotion especially vivid for the audience, as the word abandonment shows how she forgets everything else going on and is completely taken by this news. Chopin then describes her reaction as a “storm of grief,” making clear use of diction (Chopin). The loaded word “storm” shows the audience just how terrible the grief is for her, bringing up negative emotions. This sudden shock is what Josephine was trying to avoid by telling Ms. Mallard carefully, and if the shock was any worse, she could have died right then.
I have not had any experiences where knowledge was as harmful as it was to Ms. Mallard, but I have had experiences where knowledge created disappointment. Whenever I buy products online, I have tended to carefully track their shipment progress using the UPS tracking number, as it lets one see exactly where the package is. However, while knowing exactly when a package will arrive is nice, it often leads to disappointment when I find out that a package has been delayed and will not arrive when I planned. Now when I place orders I have mixed thoughts about tracking them because the chance of disappointment can sometimes outweigh the convenience of knowing when my product will arrive. In this case the knowledge UPS gives me about my packages can cause more harm than good.
It was not a matter of live or die. There was no real peril. Almost certainly the young man would have passed by. And it will always be that way.
Later, I remember, Kiowa tried to tell me that the man would’ve died anyway. He told me that it was a good kill, that I was a soldier and this was a war, that I should shape up and stop staring and ask myself what the dead man would’ve done if things were reversed.
None of it mattered. The words seemed far too complicated. All I could do was gape at the fact of the young man’s body.
Even now I haven’t finished sorting it out. Sometimes I forgive myself, other times I don’t. In the ordinary hours of life I try not to dwell on it, but now and then, when I’m reading a newspaper or just sitting alone in a room, I’ll look up and see the young man coming out of the morning fog. I’ll watch him walk toward me, his shoulders slightly stooped, his head cocked to the side, and he’ll pass within a few yards of me and suddenly smile at some secret thought and then continue up the trail to where it bends back into the fog.
In “Ambush” Tim O’Brien describes his time in the Vietnam War. The story begins with his daughter Kathleen asking him whether or not he has ever killed someone. She thinks that her father, O’Brien, “‘keep[s] writing these war stories’” to cope with the grief (O’Brien 811). Not wanting to worry his daughter, O’Brien says, “‘Of course not,’” while in reality he has killed a person before and plans on telling Kathleen the truth in the future (O’Brien 811). O’Brien then recalls the time during the Vietnam war that he did kill, imagining what he might tell his daughter if she asks again in the future. In a flashback O’Brien describes his experience killing someone. While on patrol he saw a man with a gun in the fog, so instinctively he threw a grenade at him. However, when he sees the man he killed, he realizes the significance of what he just did and still carries that guilt with him to the present day. O’Brien thinks his daughter is too young to understand that he did not mean to kill the man and did it solely from instinct. He thinks that the knowledge of what he did during the war would be too much for her to comprehend at her young age. The concepts of killing and death can be intense for young children, so O’Brien makes the decision to wait until Kathleen is older before providing her with knowledge of her war experiences.
Like how Kathleen would not understand if O’Brien told her about his experiences with killing, I have experienced times when I was younger, and death was too complicated for me to comprehend. When I was six years old, my great grandfather passed away, and the funeral was confusing for me. I suppose I had not come to the realization that he was truly gone and his death did not hit me as significant, so I did not understand why everyone was crying at the funeral. I had only ever seen my parents cry a few times had never seen my uncle cry before, so I felt strange because I did not feel all that sad about his death. If he were to have died now I would have been able to comprehend that he was really gone and would have been crying along with them, but at my young age I did not understand. O’Brien made the right choice not telling Kathleen about his experience killing someone because just as I was not able to fully comprehend my grandfather's death, Kathleen would not be able to fully comprehend what her father was telling her.
I found O’Brein’s description of how he felt when throwing the grenade especially compelling. O’Brien saw a man with a gun in the fog, and in his mind he simply wanted to make him go away. He did not even see him as an enemy and “did not ponder issues of morality or politics or military duty” (O’Brien 812). Before he realized what he was doing, he had already thrown a grenade at the man, and all he could do at that point was watch as he died. His intention was not to kill the man, and in that moment throwing the grenade was all automatic. This insight into what was going through his head at the time makes the reader empathize with O’Brien and helps one understand why he might not want to tell Kathleen. Even for him these thoughts were complicated, and his daughter would have an even harder time wrapping her head around them.