The Things They Carried

How does O'Brien describe Lemon's death?

How does O'Brien describe Lemon's death?

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Rat Kiley and Curt Lemon invent a macho game to play together. They toss smoke grenades back and forth to each other. One day the game goes wrong and a grenade explodes, killing Lemon; his death is a morbid accident. Lemon had been standing under a tree in the shade, and stepped out into the sunlight to catch the grenade. He must have thought he was killed by the sunlight, reflects O’Brien, who witnesses the event. O’Brien has to go up into the tree to pick out the Lemon's body parts that had been strewn everywhere by the blast. A soldier makes a bad pun on “lemon tree,” one of the many morbid jokes in the book.

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