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The Things They Carried Bad Quotes

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Maksym Marak Norwood English 10H-7 15 May 2023 Epic Gangster W Cool Title In The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, the death of Kiowa is employed to show how war does not have purpose or morals, and instead only causes psychological burdens of those in the war. One example of Kiowa’s death symbolizing this is when Norman says “‘I didn’t flip out,’ he would’ve said. ‘I was cool. If things had gone right, if it hadn’t been for that smell, I could’ve won the Silver Star,’” (O’Brien 143). By still thinking about a medal instead of his own friend who died, this quote is a prime example of the psychological border put by war. Instead of grieving the loss of a friend, Norman is more worried about not winning the medal because he left Kiowa to …show more content…

Along with his own belief of that, his father was also pushing for Norman to win as many medals as he could during the war, so not getting a Silver Star made Norman believe his father would be disappointed, making Norman feel even worse about it. Another example is when it's said, “Not here, he thought. Not like this. He released Kiowa’s boot and watched it slide away. Slowly, working his way up, he hoisted himself out of the deep mud, and then he lay still and tasted the shit in his mouth and closed his eyes and listened to the rain and explosions and bubbling sounds. He was alone,” (O’Brien 143). Norman was devastated about losing Kiowa when it happened. Norman had …show more content…

A guy who can’t get his act together and just drives around town all day and can't think of any damn place to go and doesn't know how to get there anyway. This guy wants to talk about it, but he can’t… If you want, you can use the stuff in this letter,” (O’Brien 151). This last quote, also connects highly to the work as a whole because Norman is writing about himself as someone who wants to talk about his problems with someone, and just get away from his old life in general, but can’t because of the way war works; it breaks you as a person and builds you back up as a soldier, and you can’t leave that behind. Norman has many bad things in his head from the war, but he can’t seem to bring himself to talk about them with anyone to make himself feel better about

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532 Words | 3 Pages

Norman had felt as if he had no one to talk to or relate to because no one around him had experienced war like he had. He tried to keep jobs when he was home from war, but not one of them had lasted more than 3 weeks. Since he feels he is unable to speak to anyone about war, he writes a letter to O’Brien, telling his entire war story. He soon feels as if he cannot do anything without thinking about war and hangs himself in the locker room of his town’s YMCA.

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191 Words | 1 Pages

When Norman Bowker thinks about his last memory of Kiowa, he has a heavy strain on his shoulders which caused him to kill himself. This also applies to when Chester Bennington, lead singer of Linkin Park, committed suicide. As Norman Bowker drived around in circles and reminiscing about life. He thought about Kiowa which gave him a guilt feeling of killing him. He believed that “a good war story,... was not a war for war stories, nor for talk of valor,...”(143) This showed how Kiowa’s death gave Norman an excessive feeling when knowing that he was not able to save Kiowa.

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725 Words | 3 Pages

Norman could’ve easily saved his friend, but failed when he couldn’t handle the environment. He continues to blame the environment, and this blame would eventually drive Norman to the point of insanity. Norman did try to cope with the loss of his friend, but he only made his condition worse. He tried talking to other people, but no one cared to listen to him and ignored him. At this point, Norman made fake conversations in his head to comfort himself when no one else would in attempts to cope.

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1435 Words | 6 Pages

The person had to deal with death and the reality of war under the worst case scenario. Bob “Rat” Kiley was that soldier and one of the many soldiers that left something in the war. He had lost his friend Curt Lemon and that’s the first sign that the war has been turning to be painful for him. This coping mechanism for the death was to write letters to lemon’s sister and he shot a baby Water Buffalo. This coping mechanism is seen in the chapter “How to tell a true war story”, shows how he has been affected and explained the toll the war had taken on him.

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1185 Words | 5 Pages

It was hard stuff to write. Kiowa, after all, had been a close friend, and for years I’ve avoided thinking about his death and my own complicity in it. Even here it’s not easy,” (94). O’Brien made sure that he revised the story. He wrote the whole thing, without telling a lie.

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1292 Words | 6 Pages

Kiowa’s death was touched upon in several stories, but the insight given to the reader of First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross’s perspective in “In the Field,” is a primary example of this. Jimmy Cross has to write a letter to Kiowa’s father concerning Kiowa’s death and he has to consider the manner in which he will write the letter. He starts off by “just saying what a fine soldier Kiowa had been, what a fine human being, and how he was the kind of son that any father could be proud of forever.” (164) Then he decides: “In the letter to Kiowa’s father he would apologize point-blank.

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423 Words | 2 Pages

In the chapter Speaking of Courage, the narrator explains how Norman tries to save Kiowa, “He would've talked about this, and how he grabbed Kiowa by the boot and tried to pull him out. He pulled hard but Kiowa was gone, and then suddenly he felt himself going, too.” (page 143). Norman lived with this for the rest of his life, playing what he could've done to save him over and over again in his head. Another example is in the chapter,

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758 Words | 4 Pages

The fact he felt this way still haunts him now causing an emotional burden. As well, Soldiers can be affected emotionally by whether or not they receive a medal during the war. Another emotional burden is when Norman is driving around the lake feeling guilty about not getting a medal and about letting his friend die: “I could’ve won the Silver Star for valor,”(140). This shows that even after the war has ended soldiers continue to be affected emotionally by the burdens faced in war. Even after he left the war, Norman continues feeling shameful and guilty about the things he’s done.

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945 Words | 4 Pages

They saw each other as friends but also as team mates. Norman Bowker was an emotional man who is self- loathing and held so much guilt after the death of Kiowa. Bowker never really knew what to do with his life after the war and turned to O’Brian to tell his story for him. O’Brian felt a bit of pity for the man when he killed himself in a YMCA locker room one afternoon.(pg 149) When he recieved the letter of all the emotions running through Bowkers mind, O’Brian said, “Norman Bowker’s letter hit me hard. For years ive felt a certain smugness about how easy i had made the shift from war to peace.”

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884 Words | 4 Pages

“In the spring of 1975, near the time of Saigon's final collapse, I received a long, disjointed letter in which Bowker described the problem of finding a meaningful use for his life after the war.” In this you see how after years later men were still struggling with issues from the war and reached out to each other for help. Although Norman did kill himself it was because he couldn't deal with his own guilt anymore for Kiowa. His brothers were always there for him and never left him, if they had known sooner they would have done everything to help him. Brotherhood is a forever bond.

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813 Words | 4 Pages

O’Brien tells the readers about him reflecting back twenty years ago, he wonders if running away from the war were just events that happened in another dimension, he pictures himself writing a letter to his parents: “I’m finishing up a letter to my Parents that tells what I'm about to do and why I'm doing it and how sorry I am that I’d never found the courage to talk to them about it”(O’Brien 80). Even twenty years after his running from the war, O’Brien still feels sorry for not finding the courage to tell his parents about his decision of escaping to Canada to start a new life. O’Brien presented his outlook that even if someone was not directly involved in the war, this event had impacted them indirectly, for instance, how a person’s reaction to the war can create regret for important friends and

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592 Words | 3 Pages

It was like taking a small amount of home with them. One of the men named Kiowa is a caring guy that is very considerate of the other men in his platoon. A main point that I saw in the novel that made me think of him considerate and caring was when he comforted O’Brien when he killed the North Vietnamese soldier. He makes O’Brien comfortable coming into the war. I don’t ever think I could process of losing a member of your platoon the way Kiowa had to go, any member would feel guilt

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1505 Words | 7 Pages

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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1043 Words | 5 Pages

“There was nothing to say. He could not talk about it and never would” (O’Brien 147). O’Brien shows the pain and trauma that Norman felt whilst he could not seem to tell anyone though he yearned to (Speaking of Courage, Notes). This gives basis to his isolated soldier role which O’Brien uses to highlight the surviving guilt for Norman’s regret of cowardice. In the chapter "Notes," O'Brien's method of reaction retelling gives a basis on how O'Brien revised the scene in "Speaking of Courage" to be more meaningful with greater detail and focus on Kiowa’s demise and Norman’s stagnation on the scene.

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1243 Words | 5 Pages

Readers can infer from this statement made by O'Brian that Norman is on a never ending circle. Some readers might suggest that Tim is talking about the circle of life, and that him driving around the lake is him wanting to start his life over again. This is wrong. Norman drives around the lake so many times, and is constantly starting over. Tim is trying to get the point across that even after war, a veteran might still find it difficult to connect to people or get over the war.

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