The Things They Carried

Describe the ways in which Rat Kiley loses control in the story "Night Life" and what is the reason he comes to this point?

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The necessity of moving around at night in order to avoid detection was emotionally destructive to Kiley, who began to act crazy. According to the other men, Kiley said that when he was looking at the other soldiers, he imagined what they looked like after they were shot. Kiley was talking about how much the soldiers would weigh when they were dead, about how hard it would be to heave them into the rescue helicopter. After a few days like this, says the soldier, Kiley started imagining himself as a dead body, too. Kiley couldn’t take the strain anymore so he took drugs and shot himself in the foot.

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The Things They Carried