If I Die in a Combat Zone

by

Tim O’Brien

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on If I Die in a Combat Zone makes teaching easy.

Tim O’Brien Character Analysis

Tim O’Brien is the author, narrator, and protagonist of the memoir. In 1968, while he is home from university, O’Brien receives his draft notice, enlisting him into the U.S. Army to fight in the Vietnam War. Though O’Brien ethically opposes the war, he feels beholden to his patriotic Minnesota community to do his duty and serve. He undergoes basic training at Fort Lewis in Washington, where he meets Erik, a fellow intellectual and objector to the war, and the two form a close bond. Both raise their ethical objections with their superior officers but they are disciplined and dismissed as cowards. When O’Brien finds out that he will serve as a foot soldier, the most dangerous occupation in the war, he forms a plan to desert the army and flee to Sweden via Canada. However, O’Brien again finds himself held captive by his own sense of duty—he gives up on his plan and flies to Vietnam to fight. In Vietnam, O’Brien joins Alpha Company under Captain Johansen, whom O’Brien considers one of the few truly courageous men in the war, possessing both a strong will and good judgment. O’Brien travels with Alpha Company throughout South Vietnam as they perform ambushes and search villages for Viet Cong soldiers. He sees many of his comrades killed by bullets, landmines, or bizarre accidents. Although O’Brien resists the army’s demonization of the Vietnamese people, as he sees more and more of his friends die, he starts to feel racial animosity toward the villagers he encounters. He participates in setting fire to villages, and when his comrades torture civilians or shoot at farmers, he does not stop them. As O’Brien’s time in Vietnam draws to a close, he works as a clerk for Major Callicles in a headquarters base, removed from combat. O’Brien’s final months pass uneventfully, but he still finds himself disturbed by America’s presence in Vietnam, and especially by the violence inflicted on civilians. Looking back, O’Brien’s experiences lead him to believe that the Vietnam War was evil.

Tim O’Brien Quotes in If I Die in a Combat Zone

The If I Die in a Combat Zone quotes below are all either spoken by Tim O’Brien or refer to Tim O’Brien. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
The Evils of the Vietnam War Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

On the perimeter of the village, the company began returning fire, blindly, spraying the hedges with M-16 and M-70 and M-60 fire. No targets, nothing to aim at and kill. Aimlessly, just shooting to shoot.

Related Characters: Tim O’Brien (speaker)
Page Number: 7
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2 Quotes

Norwegians and Swedes and Germans had taken the [Minnesota] plains from the Sioux. The settlers must have seen endless plains and eased their bones and said, “Here as well as anywhere, it’s all the same.”

Related Characters: Tim O’Brien (speaker)
Page Number: 13
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

I declared my intention to have no part of Vietnam. With delightful viciousness, a secret will, I declared the war evil, the draft board evil, the town evil in its lethargic acceptance of it all.

Related Characters: Tim O’Brien (speaker)
Page Number: 20
Explanation and Analysis:

Do dreams offer lessons? Do nightmares have themes, do we awaken and analyze them and live our lives and advise others as a result? Can the foot soldier teach anything important about war, merely for having been there? I think not. He can tell war stories.

Related Characters: Tim O’Brien (speaker)
Page Number: 23
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes

“Mama has been kissed good-bye, we’ve grabbed our rifles, we’re ready for war. All this not because of conviction or ideology; rather it’s from fear of society’s censure […] Fear of weakness. Fear that to avoid war is to avoid manhood.”

Related Characters: Erik (speaker), Tim O’Brien
Page Number: 38
Explanation and Analysis:

We laughed. We congratulated ourselves. We felt smart. And later—much later—we wondered if maybe Blyton hadn’t won a big victory that night.

Related Characters: Tim O’Brien (speaker), Erik, Sergeant Blyton
Page Number: 49
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 Quotes

“If you accept, as I do, that America is one helluva great country, well, then you follow what she tells you. She says fight, the you go out and do your damnedest. You try to win.”

Related Characters: Chaplain Edwards (speaker), Tim O’Brien
Page Number: 48
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

Later two or three more men straggled out. No helmets, no weapons. They laughed and joked and drank. The first sergeant shouted something, but the men just giggled and sat on sandbags in their underwear.

Enemy rounds crashed in. The earth split. Most of Alpha Company slept.

Related Characters: Tim O’Brien (speaker)
Page Number: 75
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

[N]o one in Alpha Company gave a damn about the causes or purposes of their war: it is about “dinks and slopes,” and the idea is simply to kill them or avoid them.

Related Characters: Tim O’Brien (speaker)
Page Number: 80
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

I asked if the North Vietnamese were not the aggressors in the war. [Li] laughed and stated that of course the opposite was the case. They were defending Vietnam from American aggression.

Related Characters: Tim O’Brien (speaker), Li
Page Number: 95
Explanation and Analysis:

We stood straight up, in a row, as if it were a contest. I confronted the profile of a human being through my sight. It did not occur to me that a man would die when I pulled the trigger of that rifle.

I neither hated the man nor wanted him dead, but I did fear him.

Related Characters: Tim O’Brien (speaker), Captain Johansen, Erik
Page Number: 97-98
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11 Quotes

More Combat Assaults came in the next days. We learned to hate Colonel Daud and his force of helicopters. When he was killed by sappers in a midnight raid, we head the news over the radio. A lieutenant led us in song, a catchy, happy, celebrating song: Ding-dong, the wicked witch is dead.

Related Characters: Tim O’Brien (speaker), Colonel Daud
Page Number: 111
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13 Quotes

In the next days it took little provocation for us to flick the flint of our Zippo lighters. Thatched roofs take the flame quickly, and on bad days the hamlets of Pinkville burned, taking our revenge in fire. It was good to walk from Pinkville and to see fire behind Alpha Company. It was good, just as pure hate is good.

Related Characters: Tim O’Brien (speaker)
Page Number: 119
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 15 Quotes

[The old men] were only a few feet away, hanging to their saplings like the men at Golgotha. I went to the oldest of them and pulled his gag out and let him drink from my canteen.

Related Characters: Tim O’Brien (speaker)
Related Symbols: Christ’s Crucifixion
Page Number: 131
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 16 Quotes

I was not at My Lai when the massacre occurred. I was in the paddies and sleeping in the clay, with Johansen and Arizona and Alpha Company, a year and more later. But if a man can squirm in the meadow, he can shoot children. Neither are examples of courage.

Related Characters: Tim O’Brien (speaker), Captain Johansen, Arizona
Page Number: 136
Explanation and Analysis:

Courage is nothing to laugh at, not if it is proper courage and exercised by men who know what they do is proper. Proper courage is wise courage. It's acting wisely, acting wisely when fear would have a man act otherwise. It is the endurance of the soul in spite of fear—wisely.

Related Characters: Tim O’Brien (speaker), Captain Johansen, Major Callicles
Page Number: 136
Explanation and Analysis:

Captain Johansen helped to mitigate and melt the silliness [of the war], showing the grace and poise a man can have under the worst of circumstances, a wrong war.

Related Characters: Tim O’Brien (speaker), Captain Johansen
Page Number: 145
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 17 Quotes

The next day we blew up tunnels and bomb shelters. A piece of clay came down and hit a man, slicing off his nose, and he drowned to death in his own blood. He had been eating ham and eggs out of a can.

Related Characters: Tim O’Brien (speaker)
Page Number: 161
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 18 Quotes

Thirty-three villagers were wounded. Thirteen were killed […] Certain blood for uncertain reasons. No lagoon monster ever terrorized like this.

Related Characters: Tim O’Brien (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Lagoon
Page Number: 168
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 19 Quotes

We weren’t the old soldiers of World War II. No valor to squander for things like country or honor or military objectives. All the courage in August was the kind you dredge up when you awaken in the morning, knowing it will be a bad day.

Related Characters: Tim O’Brien (speaker), O’Brien’s Father
Page Number: 175
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 20 Quotes

Needless to say, I am uncomfortable in my thoughts toady. Perhaps it’s that I know I will leave this place alive and I need to suffer for that.

But, more likely, what I see is evil.

Related Characters: Erik (speaker), Tim O’Brien
Page Number: 186
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 22 Quotes

“When you go into My Lai you assume the worst. When you go into My Lai, shit, you know—you assume—that they’re all VC [Viet Cong]. Ol’ Charlie with big tits and nice innocent, childlike eyes. Damn it, they’re all VC, you should know that.”

Related Characters: Major Callicles (speaker), Tim O’Brien
Page Number: 196
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 23 Quotes

The stewardess comes through the cabin, spraying a mist of invisible sterility into the pressurized, scrub-filtered, temperature-controlled air, killing mosquitoes and unknown diseases, protecting herself and America from the Asian evils, cleansing us all forever.

Related Characters: Tim O’Brien (speaker)
Page Number: 206
Explanation and Analysis:

You add things up. You lost a friend to the war, and you gained a friend. You compromised one principle and fulfilled another. You learned, as old men tell in front of the courthouse, that war is not all bad; it may not make a man of you, but it teaches you that manhood is not something to scoff; some stories of valor are true; dead bodies are heavy, and it’s better not to touch them; fear is paralysis, but it is better to be afraid than to move out and die […]

Related Characters: Tim O’Brien (speaker)
Page Number: 207
Explanation and Analysis:
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Tim O’Brien Quotes in If I Die in a Combat Zone

The If I Die in a Combat Zone quotes below are all either spoken by Tim O’Brien or refer to Tim O’Brien. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
The Evils of the Vietnam War Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

On the perimeter of the village, the company began returning fire, blindly, spraying the hedges with M-16 and M-70 and M-60 fire. No targets, nothing to aim at and kill. Aimlessly, just shooting to shoot.

Related Characters: Tim O’Brien (speaker)
Page Number: 7
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2 Quotes

Norwegians and Swedes and Germans had taken the [Minnesota] plains from the Sioux. The settlers must have seen endless plains and eased their bones and said, “Here as well as anywhere, it’s all the same.”

Related Characters: Tim O’Brien (speaker)
Page Number: 13
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

I declared my intention to have no part of Vietnam. With delightful viciousness, a secret will, I declared the war evil, the draft board evil, the town evil in its lethargic acceptance of it all.

Related Characters: Tim O’Brien (speaker)
Page Number: 20
Explanation and Analysis:

Do dreams offer lessons? Do nightmares have themes, do we awaken and analyze them and live our lives and advise others as a result? Can the foot soldier teach anything important about war, merely for having been there? I think not. He can tell war stories.

Related Characters: Tim O’Brien (speaker)
Page Number: 23
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes

“Mama has been kissed good-bye, we’ve grabbed our rifles, we’re ready for war. All this not because of conviction or ideology; rather it’s from fear of society’s censure […] Fear of weakness. Fear that to avoid war is to avoid manhood.”

Related Characters: Erik (speaker), Tim O’Brien
Page Number: 38
Explanation and Analysis:

We laughed. We congratulated ourselves. We felt smart. And later—much later—we wondered if maybe Blyton hadn’t won a big victory that night.

Related Characters: Tim O’Brien (speaker), Erik, Sergeant Blyton
Page Number: 49
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 Quotes

“If you accept, as I do, that America is one helluva great country, well, then you follow what she tells you. She says fight, the you go out and do your damnedest. You try to win.”

Related Characters: Chaplain Edwards (speaker), Tim O’Brien
Page Number: 48
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

Later two or three more men straggled out. No helmets, no weapons. They laughed and joked and drank. The first sergeant shouted something, but the men just giggled and sat on sandbags in their underwear.

Enemy rounds crashed in. The earth split. Most of Alpha Company slept.

Related Characters: Tim O’Brien (speaker)
Page Number: 75
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

[N]o one in Alpha Company gave a damn about the causes or purposes of their war: it is about “dinks and slopes,” and the idea is simply to kill them or avoid them.

Related Characters: Tim O’Brien (speaker)
Page Number: 80
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

I asked if the North Vietnamese were not the aggressors in the war. [Li] laughed and stated that of course the opposite was the case. They were defending Vietnam from American aggression.

Related Characters: Tim O’Brien (speaker), Li
Page Number: 95
Explanation and Analysis:

We stood straight up, in a row, as if it were a contest. I confronted the profile of a human being through my sight. It did not occur to me that a man would die when I pulled the trigger of that rifle.

I neither hated the man nor wanted him dead, but I did fear him.

Related Characters: Tim O’Brien (speaker), Captain Johansen, Erik
Page Number: 97-98
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11 Quotes

More Combat Assaults came in the next days. We learned to hate Colonel Daud and his force of helicopters. When he was killed by sappers in a midnight raid, we head the news over the radio. A lieutenant led us in song, a catchy, happy, celebrating song: Ding-dong, the wicked witch is dead.

Related Characters: Tim O’Brien (speaker), Colonel Daud
Page Number: 111
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13 Quotes

In the next days it took little provocation for us to flick the flint of our Zippo lighters. Thatched roofs take the flame quickly, and on bad days the hamlets of Pinkville burned, taking our revenge in fire. It was good to walk from Pinkville and to see fire behind Alpha Company. It was good, just as pure hate is good.

Related Characters: Tim O’Brien (speaker)
Page Number: 119
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 15 Quotes

[The old men] were only a few feet away, hanging to their saplings like the men at Golgotha. I went to the oldest of them and pulled his gag out and let him drink from my canteen.

Related Characters: Tim O’Brien (speaker)
Related Symbols: Christ’s Crucifixion
Page Number: 131
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 16 Quotes

I was not at My Lai when the massacre occurred. I was in the paddies and sleeping in the clay, with Johansen and Arizona and Alpha Company, a year and more later. But if a man can squirm in the meadow, he can shoot children. Neither are examples of courage.

Related Characters: Tim O’Brien (speaker), Captain Johansen, Arizona
Page Number: 136
Explanation and Analysis:

Courage is nothing to laugh at, not if it is proper courage and exercised by men who know what they do is proper. Proper courage is wise courage. It's acting wisely, acting wisely when fear would have a man act otherwise. It is the endurance of the soul in spite of fear—wisely.

Related Characters: Tim O’Brien (speaker), Captain Johansen, Major Callicles
Page Number: 136
Explanation and Analysis:

Captain Johansen helped to mitigate and melt the silliness [of the war], showing the grace and poise a man can have under the worst of circumstances, a wrong war.

Related Characters: Tim O’Brien (speaker), Captain Johansen
Page Number: 145
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 17 Quotes

The next day we blew up tunnels and bomb shelters. A piece of clay came down and hit a man, slicing off his nose, and he drowned to death in his own blood. He had been eating ham and eggs out of a can.

Related Characters: Tim O’Brien (speaker)
Page Number: 161
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 18 Quotes

Thirty-three villagers were wounded. Thirteen were killed […] Certain blood for uncertain reasons. No lagoon monster ever terrorized like this.

Related Characters: Tim O’Brien (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Lagoon
Page Number: 168
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 19 Quotes

We weren’t the old soldiers of World War II. No valor to squander for things like country or honor or military objectives. All the courage in August was the kind you dredge up when you awaken in the morning, knowing it will be a bad day.

Related Characters: Tim O’Brien (speaker), O’Brien’s Father
Page Number: 175
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 20 Quotes

Needless to say, I am uncomfortable in my thoughts toady. Perhaps it’s that I know I will leave this place alive and I need to suffer for that.

But, more likely, what I see is evil.

Related Characters: Erik (speaker), Tim O’Brien
Page Number: 186
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 22 Quotes

“When you go into My Lai you assume the worst. When you go into My Lai, shit, you know—you assume—that they’re all VC [Viet Cong]. Ol’ Charlie with big tits and nice innocent, childlike eyes. Damn it, they’re all VC, you should know that.”

Related Characters: Major Callicles (speaker), Tim O’Brien
Page Number: 196
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 23 Quotes

The stewardess comes through the cabin, spraying a mist of invisible sterility into the pressurized, scrub-filtered, temperature-controlled air, killing mosquitoes and unknown diseases, protecting herself and America from the Asian evils, cleansing us all forever.

Related Characters: Tim O’Brien (speaker)
Page Number: 206
Explanation and Analysis:

You add things up. You lost a friend to the war, and you gained a friend. You compromised one principle and fulfilled another. You learned, as old men tell in front of the courthouse, that war is not all bad; it may not make a man of you, but it teaches you that manhood is not something to scoff; some stories of valor are true; dead bodies are heavy, and it’s better not to touch them; fear is paralysis, but it is better to be afraid than to move out and die […]

Related Characters: Tim O’Brien (speaker)
Page Number: 207
Explanation and Analysis: