The Things They Carried: Chapters 15 & 16

In a sense, I lost a bit of respect of Tim O’Brien after finishing up these two chapters. In chapter 16, O’Brien was explaining how Norman Bowker had sent a letter to him several years earlier. In the letter, Bowker addressed that he felt O’Brien should “write a story about a guy who feels like he got zapped over in that shithole” (151), which is ultimately the idea of which chapter 15 was based. However, Bowker then went on to write, “If you want, you can use the stuff in this letter. (But not my real name, okay?)” (151). Bowker asked O’Brien to use his name if he was going to use his story, but that request was clearly ignored. As a result, I lost a bit of respect for O’Brien regarding the fact that he broke a sincere promise to one of his old friends. On a totally different note, O’Brien shared some interesting and powerful information in chapter 16. He wrote, “By telling stories, you objectify your own experience. You separate it from yourself. You pin down certain truths. You make up others. You start sometimes with an incident that truly happened, like the night in the shit field, and you carry it forward by inventing incidents that did not in fact occur but that nonetheless help to clarify and explain” (152). For some reason, this passage struck me. I have never once begun to think that telling stories could be such an experience for an individual, but O’Brien proved me wrong. He portrayed telling stories as being rather powerful - an adjective I never thought would have been linked to story-telling. Although he broke his promise with Bowker, I do believe that including such a personal and random story as the one in chapter 15 was effective. The details and images included in chapter 15 portrayed real events and emotions of an individual that had served in a war, which is something that we do not get the opportunity to experience that often. O’Brien wrote, “The emotional core came directly from Bowker’s letter: the simple need to talk” (152). Talking is a powerful action, one that many tend to take advantage of. All Bowker wanted to do was to talk to someone about his experience in war, yet no one would listen. As a result, in drove around in circles around the lake and was thus forced to reminisce about his wartime memories and experiences all alone. O’Brien wrote, “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…It did not know shit about shit, and did not care to know” (137). The town in which Bowker lived had no interest in hearing about his experiences in Vietnam, thus forcing him to remain silent about what had really happened.

DUE: 5/9/11
(posted one day late due to network being down)