Ambush – Tim O’Brien page 1082

1. Is this a war story or an anti-war story?

2. Why does the narrator throw the grenade?

3. What is the narrator’s reaction to what he has done?

4. How did Kiowa respond to the narrator’s reaction to the killing?

5. Kiowa uses the expression “a good kill.” Is there such a thing?

6. Why does the narrator have the fantasy he describes at the end of the story?

7. If you had been the narrator, would you have told your nine-year-old this story?

8. This is an example of how one crisis has shaped an individual. On a larger scale, national crisis can shape the country on a national scale. Give an example of a national crisis within your lifetime that has changed the country.