Ten - The Man I Killed

This is a pretty textbook example of stream of consciousness, which is kind of handy, as that's one of my literary terms. And I say "textbook example" only because even before I knew the word for it, I could tell exactly what O'Brien was doing, why he was writing this way, and what he was trying to accomplish. His style pretty effectively demonstrates how most people would feel, think, and act after killing somebody (I assume). O'Brien is stunned, and not quite thinking clearly. His thoughts are repetitive, rambling, chaotic, and he is grossly fixated (pun fully intended) on details, as can be seen in his description of the body on pages 118, 120, 121, and 123. Also, he seems completely unresponsive to the outside world, like Azar and Kiowa, and focuses primarily on the most-likely fictitious life he creates for the man: "Even growing up in the village of My Khe, he often worried about [performing badly in battle]" (p. 121). Even though he knows nothing about the man, he is positive he knows where he lived, how he grew up, his love for math, his aversion to war, and his fear of performing badly in battle. I think O'Brien makes up this math-loving pacifist for the sole reason of showing that perhaps the people on the other side were fighting for the exact same reason that he and the other men were fighting. They were to afraid to appear afraid. It seems that every character in this book is not fighting for honor, glory, wealth, power, personal gain, justice, love, or peace, but simply because they don't want to be embarrassed. And, to take it a step further, I think O'Brien might even be trying to say that America itself is in the war for the same reason as O'Brien and the man he killed: it doesn't want to look too afraid to go to war.

This is what I got when I googled "Stream of Consciousness." I think it fits pretty well. Especially that eye. Yick.