Repetition is a device O'Brien uses throughout his stories. What do you remember about the man killed by the narrator? How does the repetition of the same language enhance the event or affect your understanding of it?

Repetition is a device O'Brien uses throughout his stories. What do you remember about the man killed by the narrator? How does the repetition of the same language enhance the event or affect your understanding of it?

My feeling is that the repetition was his coping mechanism to get through a horrible action by him. It didn't matter that he did it as a soldier. He still did it...he did it...how could he have done it...but he did.

I remember well the author's description of the man he killed. I think the repetition was very effective in causing me to remember his words as well as being effective to highlight the author's discomfort, horror, whatever best personifies his feelings, at having killed another human being.

I think the author deliberately wants to sow doubt as, at times, he narrates and then, basically tells us not to believe him. This is what he does with the story of the "Man I Killed." He describes it in quite some detail; then, later, he says it is not true. I think he does this deliberately to instill in the reader the uncertainity of what the men felt in Vietnam. They never knew if they were in a safe place or not, if they could trust the people or not, or if they could even trust their own experiences. I have never killed a person and I can well imagine that most of them must have felt some indescrible feelings when they killed their first person, particularly, if they then saw the corpse up close.

Repetition is a known literary element to bring greater impact to an event. I think the author used repetition to show us the impact the killing had on him and to impact us.