In Tim O' Brien's novel The Things They Carried, Death and Darkness are two theme's that he writes and talks about. In the story The Man I Killed, O'Brien comes face to face with death for the very first time. He describes a list of horrific physical wounds/ characteristic's of a young man that he blew up using a grenade. The first incident took place in My Khe. The My Lai Massacre was a mass killing which took place in South Vietnam on March 16th, 1968. The wounds he inflicted upon his victim made the young man look mutilated and deformed, like a hideous monster. The man's jaw was completely destroyed and inside of his throat, not in it's proper position and place. His upper lip and most of his teeth are missing. His eye was sewn shut while