Speaking+of+Courage

In //Speaking of Courage// Norman Bowker's story is used to reveal the emptiness of life after Vietnam. This story looks deeply into the troubled soul of Norman after he has returned home. We don't really know what Norman's life was like before he went to war but it doesn't seem to be there for him when he comes home. He used to carry Sally Kramer's picture but she "had her new house and her new husband, and there was really nothing he could say to her." Norman returns to find himself an outsider in the place he had risked his life to "defend." Norman Bowker is a quiet man who wishes more than anything that his father didn't care about how many medals he would bring home. Although he is quiet and a decent sort of man he carries the thumb of a young Vietnamese boy that Mitchell Sanders gave to him as a souvenir. This is used to show how Vietnam affected ordinary young men such as Norman. After the war, Norman Bowker doesn't know what to do with himself. He does laps of the lake in his father's Chevy, thinking. He does lap after lap, just wishing there was somewhere to go, some purpose, a reason to be. Norman almost, but not quite, won the Silver Star. This plays with his mind as it seems that without the symbols of bravery which people in America, like his father, are able to relate to than his experiences have no meaning. He would like to tell his father the story, but he doesn't know how. He doesn't know what to say to anyone, so he doesn't talk much. He imagines telling the story: the Song Tra Bong River flooded during the rainy season, and as they camped along it, the men were overwhelmed by the smell. They couldn't sleep because of it. Norman knows that no one in his town wants to hear about this: "[The town] had no memory, therefore no guilt....It did not know shit about shit, and did not care to know." Norman remembers the night they camped in a field that turned out to be the village bathroom. The rain made the stink unbearable. Norman drives around and around the lake. It is a hot night, the fourth of July, and he knows no one in the town could handle hearing this story. Courage, he thinks, is not black and white. Sometimes you can be brave about very dangerous things, but other things are frightening for unexplainable reasons. Norman could not find it in him to be brave in that stinking field. They were attacked one night in the field, and everyone dove under the muck for cover. Norman heard shots, then he heard Kiowa screaming. He crawled in the direction of the screams, and saw Kiowa sinking. He started to try to pull him out, but the stink and muck got to be too much for him, and he let go. Norman knows that it was the smell that destroyed his bravery. He circles the lake twelve times, lost and trying to come to terms with not being in Vietnam. This story shows the reader that the honouring of the dead is not just about those who die in the field of battle, but also those who cannot handle life at home, like Norman Bowker. Bowker stands for many of the Vietnam veterans who found it impossible to adjust, impossible to communicate and impossible to make a life for themselves after the intensity of existence in a war. The comradeship of the battlefield is often held up as one of the ultimate experiences possible but the meaningful relationships, the teamwork and the shared understandings can leave an enormous void. Maybe honouring the dead is a way of getting back in touch with a moment when life had an intensity and meaning which nothing in civilian life can ever equal.