Other characters

The young man

Another character in "The Man I Killed" by Tim O'Brien is the young Vietnamese man Tim kills. He is described in detail through Tim’s perspective. His outer characterization reveals that “his eyebrows were thin and arched like a woman’s” (ll. 2-3), “his forehead was lightly freckled” (l. 5), “his fingernails were clean” (l. 5), his face was “smooth and hairless” (l. 7), and that he had “bony legs, a narrow waist, long shapely fingers” (ll. 10-11). He is an “almost dainty young man” (l. 10) in Tim’s eyes. However, these are details that Tim observes while looking at the young man’s dead body: “his neck was open to the spinal cord and the blood there was thick and shiny and it was this wound that had killed him” (ll. 7-9). There is a sharp contrast between the man’s delicate features and the horrific injuries that have been inflicted on him.

The young man’s inner characterization is entirely the product of Tim’s imagination. Tim builds the portrait of a fragile young man, unable to take part in physical activities like his friends and, consequently, being bullied by the...