Have you ever killed anyone?

    As I read through these sections of The Things They Carried the most prevalent and emotionally charged part was the description of the man Tim O'Biren killed.  The young, Vietnamese man is described as a real being with parents, ambitions, and a war story of his own.  I feel that this view of any human as "human" can serve to solve many problems we face today.  In today's society I feel that lives are taken without regard for the owner.  People are people, each one has a family, was once a child, and may have experienced the same things as many others, but violence has become such a large part of society that these things are ignored.  People become targets on video games and lives lost leads to a victory, but how can anyone be victorious when life is lost.  I feel that as time goes on war becomes more and more political and citizens become less and less aware of the severity of it.  Taking a life is in essence taking a piece of the puzzle that is the world.  Each person is real and human, having emotion and feeling pain, connecting them in an unexplainable way to every individual.  I think that one can learn from Tim O'Brien's reaction to the death of this Vietnamese man and this section's description of the man whose life was lost; one can learn that every person is REAL.  Death is not a video game or political strategy it is force far more powerful than it has come to be preceived.