Ambush
Three messages from Tim O’Brien’s Ambush In the military, men and women constantly go through traumatic experiences that change their lives forever. PTSD is something many of our service men and women go through.
Post traumatic stress disorder is when you go through a very hard situation, then many years after are still feeling the emotions and like your living it over again. Ambush is an anecdote from a much larger novel called The Things They Carried. O’Brien’s unique story is told from two different times and in different points of view. One for his daughter when she is young and the true version for when she is older. There are three importants messages in Tim O’Brien’s Ambush. Little girls tend to be very close with their fathers and look up to them a great deal. After his daughter Kathleen asked him a very disturbing question, Tim had to decide what the right choice of answer would be. “When she was nine my daughter asked if i have ever killed anyone. She knew about the war; she knew i had been a soldier.” (O’Brien) It's very uncommon for a nine year old to ask their parents if they had killed someone. Shocked he told her he had not, hiding the true answer. The innocence of this little girl and then her actions gives us perspective on the way times are changing and you never know who look sup to you. …show more content…
Anxious, Tim waited for hours in the brush of the ambush zone for something to happen. It was already too late by the time Tim had the chance to process the young man appearing in the shadows. He had already pulled the pin to the grenade, and it had left his hand. “The grenade was to make him go away-just evaporate-and i leaned back and felt my mind go empty” (O’Brien) He did not know what he was doing at the time and did not want to kill the man it was more of an instinct. The message here is that we sometimes do not think about our