Drona's son, who outlived the war by one night and used it to walk into the winners' camp and end their line while it slept.
Appears in
Abhimanyu inside the wheel — A boy who knows how to break into a formation and not how to break out of it is sent in first, and the gap closes behind him
The night attack on the sleeping camp — The war has been won and the winners are asleep; three survivors of the losing side walk into their camp in the dark
Embodies
The binding vow — A promise that outlives the reason it was made for, and the ruin its keeping costs everyone around it.
The impossible choice — Not good against evil, but duty against duty — every open course breaks an obligation the chooser also owes.
Questions to explore
His father was killed unarmed after a half-true report of his own death — does the epic offer that as explanation, as mitigation, or as neither?
Kripa gives him a full and reasonable argument against the night attack and he goes anyway — why does the text bother to write the argument out?
Ashvatthama is cursed with three thousand years of life rather than killed; is that punishment, or the epic refusing to let the war end in one more death?
