Finally, "O'Brien" comments on the temporal aspect of stories, how — even if the details are fabricated — they "make things present." Included in those "things" are "things ["O'Brien"] never looked at." Just as "O'Brien" looked away from the dead Vietnamese man in "The Lives of the Dead" when he was "actually" in Vietnam, "actually" right in front of the corpse, only in his mind — at the intersection where the past meets the present — does he make sense of it. This explains the post-modern paradox that closes the chapter: O'Brien's assertion that he will be able to answer "yes" if his daughter asks whether he has ever killed a man and to answer honestly "of course not." This recalls the scene in "Ambush" when O'Brien hopes that his daughter will one day, as an adult, ask again about his involvement in the war. This also recalls Kathleen's question at the close of "Field Trip" when she asks whether the Vietnamese farmers are still angry. Meaning, then, O'Brien suggests, shifts with time, and the main variable is when the past melds with the present in the mind of the storyteller. O'Brien can answer "yes" or "of course not" because, as the novel demonstrates, O'Brien has constructed and deconstructed these scenarios and internalized their meanings.
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