The chapter Speaking of Courage struck my emotions. In the rest of the book, I felt very disconnected from the characters and the story. However, hearing Tim O'Brien talk about how Norman Bowker felt when he returned from war made me really feel for him. I don't like feeling lied to. But even though O'Brien made up certain parts of the story, he formed it in such a way that the untrue details did not take away the significance of it. The lies did not matter much to me, because O'Brien was still able to portray Norman's emotions very well.
The parts that struck me most were the repetitiveness of Norman's drive, the continuous and static nature of the people he passed, and how he was imagining telling his story to people. I felt really bad for Norman- he came back from war, and he had so much emotion, thoughts, and trauma built up inside of him. He desperately wanted to tell someone about it, and how he almost won the Silver Star medal. But there was no one he could turn to. Sally was busy with her life that continued even while Norman was at war, his friend Max was dead, and his father was at home watching baseball. The person on the intercom was willing to listen to his story, but Norman does not want to bother him. When O'Brien mentioned at the end of the chapter that he had committed suicide, I was not even surprised. I just hope Norman Bowker can rest knowing that the readers of The Things They Carried were all listening to his story.
Helena and I were talking about how powerful the Norman scene you just described is. The part that stood out to me the most was when he used soldierly terminology to do even the most everyday tasks, like ordering in a drive-through restaurant. This also made me wonder, did Norman, somehow, want to go back to the time of his life when he was at war? Could he only feel himself again if he was in the place where his new-self belonged?
ReplyDeleteI didn’t think about that. That’s a really good point. This also seemed like how Tim O’Brien (the character and the author) felt about war when he came home. He couldn’t stop writing about war, and it was like he couldn’t escape it. I wonder if the author Tim O’Brien was projecting how he felt onto not only the character Tim, but Norman as well. Maybe there is a part of Tim in all of the characters, then.
ReplyDeleteAlthough it is a work of fiction and the stories are not true, the feelings and emotions that Tim O’Brien is projecting through his novel and his characters are definitely truthful. I think that really makes this novel so powerful. It doesn’t matter much to me that he made up these stories and details, because he was able to show us the emotions he felt, which I think is more powerful than the details.
I agree that there is a part of Tim (the author and the character) in almost every other character in the story. The reason why I hesitate to say that he is present in every character is because I had a hard time finding parallels between Tim and characters like Kathleen and Linda, who are arguably a couple of the most influential characters presented. When I compared Tim to the male characters on a shallow level, what they all have in common is their obsession with war and how it haunted them after their return, as y'all both mentioned, disregarding their emotions towards their time spent in Vietnam.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was reading through the book, I hated the short story format because it made everything in the story feel isolated, like nothing was connecting to a central story line. Reflecting back on it, I think that the short stories allowed O'Brien (the author) to emphasize the emotions that the characters felt, because they each focused on such a specific point in time.
I agree that it doesn't really matter whether the stories in his book are true or not. If anything, this book is just like Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle. It's certainly not a true story, but there are many things to be gained from it. O'Brien's stories may be more believable sure, but they really aren't all that different from Vonnegut's story. Lies that are crafted in order to more clearly make the author's point work for me, because without them, the literature wouldn't be nearly as powerful.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Meg that Norman in a way wanted to go back to Vietnam. That is not to say that he missed the war or the dangers it brought, but he did miss the way it made him feel. O'Brien mentions in the novel that war has a way of bringing you alive unlike you ever have been before. I think Norman couldn't find this feeling at home and therefore part of him wanted to go back. That empty feeling made his life back in the suburbs in the U.S. seem aimless, hence the metaphor of driving endlessly in circles around a lake.
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