Tim O’Brien’s inner struggle with going to war alters the view he has of himself. In the novel, he is tempted to run away to Canada because he does not want to go to war in Vietnam. His main concern is the humiliation he has to face if he does not go. “I feared the war, yes, but I also feared exile. I was afraid of walking away from my own life, my friends and my family, my whole history, everything that mattered to me. I feared losing the respect of my pa

After the war, Norman Bowker deals with loneliness because he cannot relate to anyone anymore. He goes through so much because of the experiences he has with war. He explains in the novel that Bowker wants to tell his story to anyone. He thinks of the ways he could tell it to his dad, but he does not know how. He thinks no one will understand because they have no idea what it is like. “ The town could not talk, and would not listen. ‘How’d you like to hear about the war?’ he might have asked, but the place could only blink and shrug. It had no memory, therefore no guilt (143).” The death of his friend, Kiowa, left a mark on his life, and he cannot forget it. He beats himself up because he was not brave enough to save his friend’s life. “He wished he could’ve explained some of this. How he has been braver than he ever thought possible, but how he had not been so brave as he wanted to be”…“If it had been possible, which it wasn’t, he would have explained how his friend Kiowa slipped away that night beneath the dark swampy field. He was folded in with the war; he was apart of the waste (153).” Bowker seems to have died when Kiowa died that night, or just have died because of Vietnam. “…My life, I mean. It’s almost like I got killed over in Nam (156).” Also, he asks Tim O’Brien to help him out by writing a story to express what happens out there when Kiowa dies. O’Brien does the best he can, but Bowker does not think it captures everything that happens. Norman Bowker ends up hanging himself because to him, being alone in life is not worth living through.

A person’s gender or who they are does not change the fact that an experience with war can lead to self-discovery. Anyone can change because they have seen how terrible it is during the adversities of war. The characters in The Things They Carried have to think of what war does to their lives. War will always pass through their mind because it is such a powerful experience. Each character experiences a time of loneliness and transformation that leads to their self-discovery. O’Brien makes a decision he does not reward himself for, but he e

Some topics in this essay:
Norman Bowker, Tim O’Brien’s, Mary Anne, Tim O’Brien, Anne Greenies, Elroy Berdahl, Mark Fossie, Top Lodge, Berdahl O’Brien, Greenies Sometimes, mary anne, mark fossie, elroy berdahl, norman bowker, experience war, feel close, tim o’brien’s, border canada, war apart, adversities war,