Speaking Of Courage In The Things They Carried, By Tim O Brien

The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, is an emotion provoking collection of short stories about the Vietnam War. One story “Speaking of Courage” is a post-war story about Norman Bowker, who was a member of the Alpha Team, and him struggling to cope with what had happened in Vietnam, while looping around a lake in his hometown. The next story of the cycle, “Notes”, is written by Tim O’Brien (the character) in the first person as a footnote or background about why “Speaking of Courage” was written and what happened to Norman Bowker. We learn that he sends a letter to Tim O’Brien to request a story written about his struggle to cope with the past and the death of Kiowa.The letter that Norman Bowker sends to Tim O’Brien was a plea for help from

In his hometown he “followed the tar road on its seven-mile loop around the lake, then he started all over agian”(131) eleven times, while recollecting scenes from the field. With no one to talk to, Norman imagines how his father, Max Arnold, a high school friend that drowned in a lake, and Sally Kramer, his high school crush, would have reacted to his war stories. An important anecdote that Norman “would’ve told” to his father, was about the Silver Star he almost won. Though he “might then have listed the seven medals he did win”, he told the story of how Kiowa was killed in the field and how he was not able to get his friend out out of the sludge. Norman would have explained to his father “that many brave men do not win medals for their bravery”(135). Even during the war he wished that his father would send him a letter saying that it does not matter how many medals he wins because, “That's all [his] old man talks about, nothing else. How he can't wait to see [his] goddamn medals."(34) The pressure of meeting his father’s expectations has weighed on him since the beginning of the war, but he is not able to talk to his father about it. Norman just thinks about what would happen if he would have expressed his feelings. As he was driving he noticed “four workmen… setting up for the evening fireworks”(138) and he whispered from his car, “Want

Tim O’Brien wrote “Speaking of Courage” and “almost immediately there was a sense of failure”(153). O’Brien felt that his story failed Norman Bowker's wishes because he wrote the story as “a shadowy idealized recollection of its virtues…. that had been ruined by a failure to tell the full and precise truth”(153). He tried to force the story of the Norman into the mold “that better fit the book’s [Going After Cacciato] narrative”(153) causing it to lose its authenticity. Norman Bowker was so far removed from actually processing his feelings because he sent a letter to have Tim O’Brien asking to write his story about his experiences and feelings because he didn’t have that capability of language. Three years later, Norman Bowker hung himself, but “there was no suicide note, no message of any kind.”(154). Even if Tim O’Brien wrote a more pertinent story about Norman’s feelings, we can infer that it would not have helped him. Norman’s inarticulate and introvert behavior caused his bottled up feelings to destroy him in the end and even when he killed himself, he could not find any words for his final chance to tell his