Tim

Tim is the main character of the short story “The Man I Killed” by Tim O’Brien. He is also the first-person narrator, so all the events are described from his perspective. We do not have too many details regarding Tim's outer characterization. Readers can conclude that Tim is a soldier fighting for the Americans during the Vietnam War (l. 31), but no other clues are given about Tim’s age or appearance.

The story mainly focuses on Tim’s inner characterization, which we can guess from Tim’s reaction to killing the young Vietnamese man. Tim acknowledges that he killed the young man and describes the body in great detail:

His jaw was in his throat, his upper lip and teeth were gone, his one eye was shut, his other eye was a star-shaped hole, his eyebrows were thin and arched like a woman’s, his nose was undamaged, there was a slight tear at the lobe of one ear, his clean black hair was swept upward into a cowlick at the rear of the skull, his forehead was lightly freckled, his fingernails were clean, t...