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Comparison Between 'Speaking Of Courage And Notes'

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In the chapter “Speaking of Courage” and “Notes” of the book “The things they carried” by Tim O’brien, the author mainly expresses two truths. First truth exhibits the phenomenon on the surface that attending war is hurtful. The stories in “Speaking of Courage” and “Notes” perfectly represent the believed truth, which is came up by human based on the combination of facts and imagination. They might not be something truly happened, but they explained the undoubtable truths in the real world. According to O’brien, “ I almost won the Silver Star, he (Norman Bowker) would have said (135)”. Bowker is greatly changed after serving in vietnam war by all the experience killing and hurting. He believes that he can fit nowhere and talk with nobody. So he just decides to driving on loop over …show more content…

Anthony Swofford insists that, “ A moral injury occurs when a soldier’s concepts of trust and right and wrong do not survive the heat of battle (5)”. In real life, there are many soldiers acting just like Bowker that they think they have nowhere to go and nobody to talk with because they are deeply hurt by the war. In addition, Tobias Wolff states, “Will was still angry about the war, and in his anger tended to draw on the political language of the '60s, which left an uneasy silence in the room (1)” . His personal experience of talking with people who fight in the war implies how much impact can be brought by a war. The story probably happened in 1980s, but Will who served as orderly in a VA hospital is still angrily talking about the 1960s politics that caused the war, and the war itself caused permanent influence on him and many other young soldiers. Not all three articles show the believed truth, but both three articles reflects the clear phenomenon addressed by Tim O’brien that the soldiers would be deeply affected by war with moral

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