Courage In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

Teddy Roosevelt once said, “Courage is not having the strength to go on; it is going on when you don’t have the strength.” Throughout the whole novel of The Things They Carried, there are continuous examples of courage and what courage means to different soldiers. Tim O’Brien, the author of The Things They Carried, tells multiple war stories throughout the novel all with different morals. However, one thing that all of these war stories have in common is that each displays an example of great courage.

One war story that we read about in the novel, is the story of Norman Bowker and Kiowa. In the chapter, “Speaking of Courage” we learn about Norman Bowker’s life after he returned home from war and his stories of what happened while in war.

After Norman Bowker returned home from war he wanted to tell people his stories, but he was afraid people didn’t want to listen to them. He especially wanted to tell his family about what happened, but his father was uninterested because he was disappointed that Norman didn’t win the Silver Star metal. While on a drive around town, Norman Bowker tells us the story that he wanted to tell his father, the story of how he almost won the Silver Star. He explains how he was stationed with Kiowa. Kiowa was described through the novel as a simple, kind guy, who went to Church, he was also described as the Alpha Company's therapist or emotional compass. An example of how Kiowa was an emotional compass for the group, is when Tim O’Brien killed a man and was having a hard time with cooping. “Think it over,’ Kiowa said. Then later he said, ‘Tim it’s a war. The guy wasn’t Heidi–he had a weapon, right? It’s a tough thing, for sure, but you got to cut out that staring” (O’Brien 120). Norman continues by describing the accident that happened that night. He explains how there was an explosion that went over and made

For Teddy Roosevelt’s quote from earlier, his definition of courage is going to keep going when you don’t have the strength to do so. Tim O’Brien describes courage as a complex of emotion that is not always easy to understand. My personal opinion of what courage is and what it means to me, is to do something “heroic” that someone goes out of their way to do. An example of this would be, if you’re driving around and you see a family of ducks trying to cross the street. Instead of just driving past them, if you were to get out and stop traffic so the family of ducks could cross I would consider that