Norman Bowker's 'Peace At War'

Peace at War The Indian spiritual leader, Sri Chinmoy, once stated, “War forgets peace. Peace forgives war. War is the death of the life human. Peace is the birth of the Life Divine. Our vital passions want war. Our psychic emotions desire peace.” When we decide to forget war and hatred in our society then the world will be at peace. Less people like Norman Bowker will be depressed because of something as tragic as war. Norman took his life because of war, that has to mean it isn’t very peaceful there right? Norman Bowker was a man that was so broken from war that he was unable to talk about it with anyone. Although some soldiers do not suffer from any PTSD at all, a lot of soldiers struggle with post traumatic stress disorder, which takes

When Kiowa died, Norman blamed himself because he just let him sink away. Tim explains Norman’s feelings when Kiowa died, “Kiowa, after all, had been close friend, and for years I’ve avoided thinking about his death and my own complicity in it. Even here it’s not easy. In the interests of truth, however, I want to make it clear that Norman Bowker was in no way responsible for what happened to Kiowa.” (O’Brien 154). This quotes shows how broken Norman was when his best friend died. Norman always blamed himself because he felt like that is all he could do to show Kiowa his peace. In no way could Norman blame anyone else for what happened so he blamed himself which affected Tim because Tim believes it wasn’t his fault at all. Norman writes a letter to Tim telling him to write a story about how he let Kiowa get away and die. Norman wrote a letter to Tim expelling how war has changed him, “what you should do, Tim, is write a story about a guy who feels like he got zapped over in that sh*thole. A guy who cant get his life together and just drives around town all day and cant think of any damn place to go and doesn’t know how to get there anyway. This guy wants to ask about it, but he can’t…something about the field that night. The way Kiowa just disappeared into the crud. You were there—you can tell it” (O’Brien 151). This was Norman’s cry for help. He wanted his peace and he was hoping that if he saw it written out then he would be better. He thought that could talk about it then, but by the time it was written it was too late because Norman Bowker was already dead. Norman Bowker’s interactions with other characters drove his throughs to be as harsh as they were and caused him to blame himself for his best friend’s