In the chapter "The Man I Killed" the author usues repetition alot when describing what injuries the soldier had after O'Brien had killed him. It talks about a butterfly on the dead man's face three times: once when it's "on his chin", another when it's "...making it's way along the young man's forehead", and the last when it had gone. I looked up the symbolic meaning of a butterfly and found it was a meaning of death and a new beginning. Even though nature itself isn't effected by the man's death, his loved ones are and they'll have to start a "new beginning" without him.
O'Brien later starts relating himself to this man he's killed and creating a story from his appearences of who he could have been or become. He first creates his opinion when he he examines his "bony legs, a narrow waist, long shapely fingers. His chest was sunken and poorly muscled-a scholar, maybe." He is comparing and contrasting a large majority of describing the man's life compared to his own: "He would have been taught that to defend the land was a man's highest duty and highest privilage. He had excepted this...he avoided politics and paid attention to the problems of calculas.", and "The war, he knew, would finally take him, but for the time being he would not let himself think about it. He had stopped praying; instead, now, he waited." Did O'Brien actually descover all these things from eventually meeting someone who had known the guy? Did he find his family out of respect? Was he just creating the man's life in his head based off of facts he saw? Or is this even a real part taking place in the story?
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