Kathleen

 Kathleen is O’Brien’s daughter and a symbol of the naïve outsider. Although O’Brien alludes to having multiple children, Kathleen is the only one we meet. Her youth and innocence force O’Brien to try to explain the meaning of the war. Frustrated that he cannot tell her the whole truth, he is inspired by her presence since it forces him to gain a new perspective on his war experience.

O’Brien imagines how he might relay the story of the man he killed to his nine-year-old daughter, Kathleen. In this second story, O’Brien provides more details of the actual killing—including the sound of the grenade and his own feelings—and explains that even well after the fact, he hasn’t finished sorting out the experience.

Kathleen had just turned ten, and this trip was a kind of birthday present, showing her the world, offering a small piece of her father's history. For the most part, she'd held up well—far better than her dad—and over the first two weeks, she'd trooped along without complaint as we hit the obligatory tourist stops.

She was a very young, but strong personality. Kathleen had seemed to enjoy the foreignness of it all, the exotic food and animals, and even during those periods of boredom and discomfort she'd kept up a good-humored tolerance. At the same time, however, she'd seemed a bit puzzled. The war was as remote to her as cavemen and dinosaurs.

Kathleen tells his father that it's an obsession, that he should write about a little girl who finds a million dollars and spends it all on a Shetland pony. But the thing about remembering is that you don't forget. You take your material where you find it, which is in your life, at the intersection of past and present.