Perspectives
Literary perspective
The short story "Ambush" by Tim O'Brien is part of the collection of interconnected short stories The Things They Carried, based on the author's own experience in the Vietnam War.
The story has some post-modernist elements. First of all, "Ambush" uses a first person narrator, and the story focuses on his emotions and on the way a certain event from the war affected him. The story also has an unusual structure, as most of it is actually a flashback. Also, the narrator can perhaps be regarded as a persona of the author, and the entire collection The Things They Carried blends fiction with reality, which is another feature of post-modernist fiction. The short story also belongs to the genre of war stories, as its focus is an attack during the Vietnam War, and its mental effects on the narrator.
