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How Does Norman Change In Speaking Of Courage

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The opinions of our society, heavily influence who we are and who allow ourselves to become. Another example of social pressure is seen in the chapter, “Speaking of Courage” by Tim O’Brien. Norman has come back a completely different person, but nothing about where he came from has changed in a way to help him ease back into society. Norman keeps driving and he's thinking about all of the people he wishes he could talk to like his father or Sally, but they're caught up in their own lives and Norman doesn't feel like his issues are important enough to intrude, or that they wouldn't understand. He imagines an entire conversation with his father, whose approval he sought out so desperately in the war, and in their conversation his father would celebrate how courageous Norman was, even though Norman feels like a failure for not winning the Silver Star for …show more content…

The town refuses to hear the horror stories, nonetheless they continue to celebrate America. In the chapter on Bowker's twelfth circulation, the fireworks start to go off. It's Independence Day and there's a huge show celebrating America and its victory in war, shiny lights in the sky like shiny medals on a uniform, but Bowker is still alone, with no one listening to his unspeakable thoughts. Thus he has a hard time coping with his bagage and ends up losing his battle with society. In the article “The Psychological Effects of Vietnam War” expresses the Veteran attitudes toward life at home. As Veterans were constantly surrounded by civilians who cannot relate to what soldiers went through and endured, the Vietnam veterans began to succumb to the beliefs and views of those who did not go to the War. Instead of remaining proud of what they believe in and what they had fought for, the veterans in Born on the 4th of July to gradually weaken in their

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O’Brien makes it understable to the readers that Bowker died in Vietnam and has no chance of recovering, he can’t seem to find meaning of life after the war. O’Brien’s main purpose of writing “Speaking of courage” was mainly to try and explain what soldiers had to deal with once they returned home from war, and not only how to deal with being disconnected from society, but also from their loved ones. After returning from

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1682 Words | 7 Pages

Therefore, the second element that deteriorates Norman’s state of mind, is his own unreasonable expectations. Lastly, as a Vietnam veteran, when Norman is back, and months have passed, the author describes how Norman’s hometown no longer holds a sense of nostalgia. O’Brien clearly demonstrates Norman’s confusion and loss of hope at the beginning of the chapter “Speaking of Courage,” where Norman spends a few long paragraphs introducing plenty of characters who had a strong effect on him during his childhood. Norman’s description of life for those people now compared to the beginning of the war stresses the lack of a story regarding his own future. The reader here notices that there is no set path for Norman, and that the author, has only left fragments of Norman’s old peers and how they have their lives all put together, now: “Before the war they'd driven around the lake as friends, but now Max was just an idea, and most of Norman Bowker's other friends were living in Des Moines or Sioux City, or going to school somewhere, or holding down

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990 Words | 4 Pages

Bowker is back home trying to readjust to life after the war. He didn’t know how to act or what to say, and others didn’t know what to say to him. Norman carried the weight of the shame and guilt that the war caused from the death of Kiowa, of whom he felt he could have saved. Norman could not stop thinking about the war and could even tell what time it was based on the sun, “The sun was lowered now. Five fifty five, he decided.

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1094 Words | 5 Pages

Norman basically feels like he’s trapped and stuck in war and Tim wrote “Its tone jumping from self-pity to anger to irony to guilt to a kind of feigned indifference” (O’Brien 150). These things many people with depression and PTSD feel and he feels like part of him was already

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1041 Words | 5 Pages

In addition, Bowker is seen talking to a drive through worker in military language, which the drive through worker understands, showing that only ones in the war can understand. The others, who did not go to war, do not even bother to listen to his stories. However, all these stories are fictional. None of them happened, yet the reader can understand better with the made up details. The reader, while not getting an accurate representation of the events, gets a better, deeper understanding of the emotions and deeper aspects of the Vietnam War: the real

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990 Words | 4 Pages

The war forces people into situations where the pressure is too much and the environment forces a change on how one views himself. Curt Lemon and Norman Bowker held themselves to standards that they couldn’t reach. They let the war determine how they live and who they would become. The war causes the human spirit to change so vastly that it leads to a demise, so quick and drastic, that it is hard to

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664 Words | 3 Pages

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.

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Tim O’Brien, a soldier who is hardened by the events of the war, arrives home with immense guilt and new, conflicting emotions that he must learn to control. His fellow soldier Norman Bowker returns from the war, unable to cope with the war mentally as well as emotionally. Vietnam also drastically alters the personality of Mary Anne Bell, an American civilian visiting Vietnam, into someone unrecognizable to those who knew her before she had traveled to Vietnam. The transformative psychological effects of the war on Americans in Vietnam are illustrated through the characterizations of Tim O’Brien, Norman Bowker, and Mary Anne Bell in The Things They Carried. Tim O’Brien transforms after the war, and he becomes mentally burdened by guilt, as well as exceedingly emotionally challenged.

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The soldiers in the Vietnam War are portrayed as losing themselves in the chaos and trauma of combat. Through the stories of the soldiers and their experiences, O’Brien explores the ways in which war strips away one's sense of identity and humanity. The author himself is depicted as losing himself in the war. O'Brien served in the Vietnam War, and his experiences inspired much of the book. Through the character of Tim O'Brien, the author explores the ways in which war can strip away one's sense of self and purpose.

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One of the main reasons O’Brien, a Vietnam veteran, wrote this novel, was “to communicate his traumas incommunicability (Hope College/WTS Journal List)” to the outside world in a way that verbalizing never could. The war left many soldiers so damaged that they failed at communicating feelings of guilt and trauma to others. The book shows this several times and it is one of the largest ways in which the Vietnam War mentally affected those closest to it. In the section titled, “Speaking of Courage”, Norman Bowker, a Vietnam veteran who fought with O’Brien, drives around a lake thinking of the war. He is unable to explain his war experiences to people who will listen.

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Already he had passed them six times, forty-two miles, nearly three hours without stopping” (O’Brien 139-140). As if Norman was stuck in a loop, he drove around that lake, reliving moments of his life from when he was in Vietnam. He questioned, doubted, and second guessed things that had happened. He wants to tell his story to his friends but they all moved on with their lives while he was in Vietnam in the war, leaving him with no one. He wanted to talk to someone but he couldn’t.

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707 Words | 3 Pages

He enters the war believing that what mark men as courageous are the medals and services awarded to them. Ultimately, Bowker is unable to leave the war behind and upon returning back he believes that “the town could not talk, and would not listen” meaning no one would truly be able to understand him (137). Bowker has no one to turn to and this leaves him with the only option he believes is the answer, and so he commits suicide. During the war, Bowker was a gentle character who carried the thumb of a Vietnamese corpse “that had been presented to him as a gift by Mitchell Sanders” and a personal diary. Like Lavender and Cross, Bowker’s escape from the war was his personal diary.

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319 Words | 2 Pages

Another post-war story, “Speaking of Courage” is in Norman Bowker’s point of view. He is driving around the lake of his hometown over and over again, stuck in memories of the war. He imagines telling the story of how he almost won a Silver Star and why he did

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991 Words | 4 Pages

“Soldiers Home” by Ernest Hemingway and “Speaking of Courage” by Tim O’Brien both deal with the difficulties of veterans returning home from war. Both of the protagonists, Krebs and Bowker respectively, experience trauma, which leads them on a search for self-discovery and an outlet for their pain. At the end of each story, neither of the characters wants to participate in society anymore. Despite the similarities, Norman Bowker is more forthcoming with his feelings, ultimately making him a more successful character. In addition, the similarities and differences between the authors’ styles accentuate those that occur within the characters of the stories; both authors use symbolism to show the changes in the dynamic characters over the course of the narratives.

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994 Words | 4 Pages

Veterans face traumatic events out on the battlefield that changes their lives forever. As they fight through war, it becomes a lifestyle that they are used to moreover can not get out of. People do not appreciate the amount of time veterans give to fight our country. Coming home from the war veterans most times feel like they are still fighting a war.

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