Themes and message

War and its consequences

In the short story “Ambush” by Tim O’Brien, war is depicted as a senseless game in which there are no winners. The narrator can be considered a “winner” according to the rules of war, since he has survived and did his duty as a soldier. However, he pays the price by being haunted by memories of his past actions and tormented by his guilty conscience. Furthermore, the narrator finds it difficult to make sense of the event which traumatized him and is unable to decide if his actions were justified or not: “Even now I haven’t finished sorting it out. Sometimes I forgive myself, other times I don’t.” (ll. 65-67). This suggests that soldiers were not supported psychologically during or after the war.

The narrator does not feel personally involved in the war and does not see the young man as an enemy (ll. 35-36). There is, however, a sense of generalized fear and anticipation in the narrator, which contributes to his automatic action of throwing the grenade: “I was afraid of him – afraid of something- and as he passed me on the trail I threw a grenade which exploded at his feet and killed him” (ll. 10-12). As he describes the event in detail, he...