The Ambush

In this story, O'Brien uses a first-person narrator to recount an incident of war. The narrator's nine-year-old daughter, knowing that her father writes war stories, asks him if he has ever killed anyone. The narrator says no but resolves to tell her the truth when she is grown. He then recalls how he killed a young man in Vietnam. He and another soldier were on patrol, taking turns sleeping and keeping watch. Out of the predawn fog, a young man approached carrying a gun. Instinctively, the narrator pulled the pin on a grenade and threw it, wanting to make the man disappear, not to kill him. Then he describes seeing the man's corpse with a hole where an eye should be. The narrator realizes that he could have let the man pass unharmed and that there was no real danger. Years later, the incident still haunts him. Sometimes he can forgive himself, sometimes not.


In this story, O'Brien uses a first-person narrator to recount an incident of war. The narrator's nine-year-old daughter, k...