Summary Of The Chapter 'Speaking Of Courage By Tim O' Brien

In the short story “Speaking of Courage” by Tim O’Brien, metaphors are used throughout the story to emphasize that a passing of time does not make it any easier for soldiers to convey their thoughts and attachments to the war to those around them. The story takes place after the war is over on a Sunday at a lake. Norman Bowker, the main character, is seen driving continuously around this lake while thinking about his childhood. He drives around so much that has already passed two young boys on the same road “six times, forty-two miles, nearly three hours without stop” (O’Brien 133). As he continues to circle the lake, the reader is able to discover more about Bowker’s past in his hometown. “Before the war, they’d driven around the lake as friends, but now…the high school girls were mostly

Norman Bowker keeps his thoughts to himself, because of his difficulty expressing his emotions. He could not find the words to show and tell others how he felt from his experiences from the war. In doing so Bowker carries all the damage that war can do to a man during and after the war. The crucial healing process that includes telling one’s stories and thoughts of the war was something he could not do properly. Bowker had a possible chance of some therapy through the story in the book from O’Brien, but the story is not told in the correct way to Bowker’s true feelings, and leads to his emotional burdened death.

Through The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien moves beyond the horror of fighting in the Vietnam War to examine with sensitivity and insight the nature of courage and fear. Included, is a collection of interrelated stories. A few of the stories are brutal, while others are flawed, blurring the distinction between fact and fiction. All the stories, however, deal with one platoon. Some are about the wartime experiences of soldiers, and others are about a 43-year-old writer reminiscing about his platoon’s experiences. In the beginning chapter, O’Brien rambles about the items the soldiers carry into battle, ranging from can openers, pocketknives, and mosquito repellent o

Profiles in Courage starts with beginning of the formation of the United States of America. The book features several men who showed courage throughout senate history. They include, John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, Thomas Hart Benton, Sam Houston, Edmund G. Ross, Lucius Quintus Cininnatus Lamar, George Norris, and Robert A. Taft. Each senator stood for what they thought was right instead of conforming to public opinion or what their party thought. They had minds of their own and went against the wave. They fought for what they believed in even if it was unpopular and could cost their jobs. The author’s purpose is to show what courage is through the use of mood, dialog, and logos.

Courage tells us a lot of things and makes us think because without courage we shouldn’t live and walk around others with our full emotions and not been not bad and nice but normal “courage is what it takes to stand up and speak courage is what it takes to sit down and listen” (winston churchill). And I think it is the best behavior that a human can have in his life. And there is more good things that we write or learn.

In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, we see a distinct correlation between two chapters, Speaking Of Courage and Notes. In these two chapters, we see the story of Norman Bowker, a man O’Brien served with in the Vietnam War. O’Brien shows how Bowker still looks back on the events that happened with his friend Kiowa downing in the shit of the mucky sewage field and how he did not save him. We see that Norman Bowker feels like shit, does not like life as he has it, and wants out. The direct correlation between the two chapters is that we see the same story told from different points of view. Speaking of Courage presents Bowker’s tale in third person, while Notes relates O’Brien’s memory of Bowker in first person.

Even though Bowker made it out of the war alive, he was not himself when he returned home. He could not bring himself to talk to anyone about his experiences, though it “[was] a good time to talk” (134). As Bowker thought of all the people he could talk to about his war stories and how he had almost been given the Silver Star, he can only conjure the conversations in his imagination. When finally given the chance to get his emotions off his chest at the A&W, Bowker could only muster out “Nothing” when the intercom questioned if he had anything to say (146). The reluctance to share true war memories is a quality that veterans who have observed severe trauma can relate to. Similar how to Bowker continued around the lake in circles and circles, veterans cannot break out of the circle that is their experience of war. The only people they feel safe talking to are members of their old platoon, and even if they want to be able to express themselves and their emotions, there is a seemingly invisible barricade that prevents them from sharing. In Bowker’s case, the pent up emotion lead to “[hanging] himself in the locker room of a YMCA” (149). Though this story was invented by O’Brien, the thousands of soldiers who annually commit suicide is not a work of fiction. By using such abrupt, blunt diction to

A large part of the novel explains how one of O’Brien’s fellow soldiers Norman Bowker felt guilty and responsible for the death of Kiowa, just as Jimmy Cross did. He wrote O’Brien a long letter in which he described the problem of finding a meaningful use for his life after the war. He explained the guilt he carried for the death of Kiowa “That night when Kiowa got wasted, I sort of sank down into the sewage with him… Feels like I’m still in deep shit” (156). This seventeen page letter express his guilt to hopefully make sense of his actions. Bowker is clearly not coping with post-war life well, and his guilt is getting the best of him. When he tells the story of Kiowa’s death he explains “He pulled hard but Kiowa was gone, and then suddenly he felt himself going too” (149). The guilt Bowker possessed not only cost him his sanity, but also his

Ordinary courage is a book that tells the story of an ordinary man who is inlisted in the continental army in the revolutionary war. Joseph Plumb Martin is the young man fighting in this war, at the time he entered he was just a mere 16 year old kid but by the time his time in the continental army was up he became a man. This is a first person memoir of what it was like for a regular person living in a war zone, and dealing with the everyday fears of food shortage, low morale, and danger of attack. This is something that many people in todays world could not handle because even some of the old guys in the

Tim O’Brien, a character in The Things They Carried, felt guilt about the man he killed. O’Brien then adds, “He was not a Communist. He was a citizen and a soldier” (O’Brien 125). Kiowa kept telling O’Brien that it wasn’t his fault it is a war, the man a weapon O’Brien could never have known if he was going to just keep walking by or try and kill O’Brien himself. O’Brien’s guilt kept him thinking of what the man would have done when he grew up he writes, “He wanted someday to be a teacher of mathematics” (125). The way O’Brien deals with the death of the man he killed was he started writing and become an author. Bowker was the one who got O’Brien to start writing to deal with his guilt. After a while, O’Brien got used to understanding he had killed a man, but he never completely got over it

For more than twenty years, O’Brien “had to live with it, feeling the shame, trying to push it away, and so by this act of remembrance, by putting the facts down on paper, I'm hoping to relieve at least some of the pressure on my dreams" (O’Brien 37). Twenty years is a long time to suffer from the feeling of shame. Despite O’Brien’s attempts to reflect on stories that happened to him down on paper, he only hopes to alleviate his feeling of shame instead of stopping it because he understands that feeling of shame would not easily to be ceased. After the Vietnam War, tormented by the fact that Norman Bowker himself had not be able to save Kiowa from Kiowa’s death, he keeps playing past events in his mind, and he “followed the tar road on its seven-mile loop around the lake then he started all over again, driving slowly, feeling safe inside his father’s big Chevy” (O’Brien 131). He repeatedly drives around the lake because he does not know how to ease his feeling of embarrassment.

The author demonstrates that Tim is stuck contemplating on whether or not to face the Vietnam War and is rather depressed because whatever choice he makes is still a bad choice for him. For instance, in the novel The Things They Carried O’Brien addresses “What it came down to, stupidly, was a sense of shame. Hot, stupid shame… I was ashamed to be there at the Tip Top Lodge. I was ashamed of my conscience, ashamed to be doing the right thing” (O’Brien 49). This quote helps establish a depressing and humiliating tone because these types of thoughts are a continuity throughout the chapter. In this chapter, Tim is constantly attacked by his conscience and his conscience acts as the force that pulls him back from going to the war. That shame of “doing the right thing” comes from him believing that the Vietnam War is absurd. The other factor that makes O’Brien depressed is the fear of embarrassment. The tone helps convey his purpose in the book because it helps the reader relate to Tim’s struggle. By using a depressed tone, we are exposed to his true identity and

and then to Vietnam, where I was a soldier, and then home again. I survived but not a happy conclusion.. I was a coward,, I went to the war” (61). We also see that the main reason that kept him from running from the war was the fear that people in his hometown would call him a coward. Norman Bowker is introduced as a courageous soldier who is experienced and who fought boldly against his enemies.

In the novel, The Things They Carried, the author Tim O’Brien uses the novel to explain the art of storytelling. However, in several chapters of the novel, O’Brien uses the novel to explain a love story towards his fellow soldiers. Following the war, soldiers that were in O’Brien’s platoon continue to suffer from the traumatic experiences. One soldier, Norman Bowker, needed O’Brien’s help to write his story of trauma that he is experiencing from the Vietnam war. When O’Brien fails to Bowker’s experience, that he is feeling at home, Bowker feels as if no one will ever relate to him and he cannot talk to anyone about his war experience. Due to Bowker’s loneliness and O’Brien’s failed writing attempts to put Bowker’s story into words, Bowker commits

Bowkers guilt became so strong that it caused him to drive wildly around his hometown to write O’Brien a letter explaining how he never felt right after the war and how he wants to hang himself. His stories show that he needed help carrying the burden of the Vietnam War as part as his past. Shame and guilt ends up following Bowker with such intensity that he eventually ends hangs himself. It is a feeling that no soldier that was participating in the war was able to escape.