This highlights the guilt he feels for killing the young man and he is essentially talking about himself when he makes up the story of this young man's life no one because O'Brien says that "the young man I did not want to be a soldier" and in the chapter "On a Rainy River" he tells us that he never wanted to go to war and that he almost escaped to Canada. More precisely, O'Brien sees this man as himself, as what he will transform into if he loses his life in war. In his fantasy about the young man's life he finds similarities, and these similarities are not the desire to be at war and the fear of shame if you don't go to war, which was a loss, a loss.