The Lives of the Dead

O'Brien continues to tell stories because they keep alive the memory of whatever they're about. He continues to tell the stories about Vietnam because when he's gone, what will there be to tell then if he doesn't do it first? They're his memories that will live on and be relevant because they're being thought upon. The parallel storytelling of Linda, Tim's young love that died, with the story of Curt Lemon, who went out on Halloween and disrobed a Vietnamese woman and took her clothes. There is a contrast of good and bad in O'Brien's life and he tells the stories to maybe remind himself of all what he's experienced and the person it has made him. Most of what he has gone through seems like fiction to regular people who haven't been able to live life and now he can dress it up any which way he wants to because he knows what's the truth and as long as he does, it doesn't matter what's really being told to others. This is also why he creates the most main character we have in his image because it's easier to lie if it's yourself you're lying about. However, this also enables him to incorporate his own opinions and lessons on morality with becoming preachy. It's really great that he was able to also include insight and emotion along with history because it makes what could be false just a little more real.

Night Life

I suppose that when you become one with Vietnam for too long it drives you insane and you can't help but feel trapped inside. That's why Rat Kiley started itching himself to the point where he bled because after feeling nothing for so long, real pain is what he needed. It's ironic that he feels that the bugs are after him and that the bugs are eating him alive because bugs are what do indeed eat you after you die. Especially if you're left on the ground in war. All of the things he's hallucinating are things that he actually has seen being a medic and as a medic you're not supposed to break down like Kiley is doing which is why no one can blame him when he puts a bullet through his own foot. All of the stories in this novel end with whatever character is the main focus losing something, whether it be their life or their mind or somebody else's life. That's what war is about, though. Losing to gain. The soldiers lose something in order for higher powers to gain whatever it is they want. It's unfair and it will continue to be.

The Ghost Soliders

This chapter was funnier than the last couple. It reveals that Tim O'Brien is sort of a mad man. To contemplate vengeance against Booby Jorgenson, who was new to the field and who was trying his best under mutual circumstances, is kind of crazy. Also, when O'Brien is extracting his revenge it's funny that he tries to recruit someone like Mitchell Sanders first who earlier in the chapter he describes as someone who "believed in the power of morals" so of course Sanders wouldn't want to morally obligate himself with O'Brien. So then O'Brien enlists Azar who is perfectly fine with what Tim is planning because Azar is obviously "just a boy."

It's eerie when Tim and Azar are playing with Jorgenson because Tim goes on to describe it as "I was the beast on their lips - I was Nam - the horror, the war." This is vaguely reminiscent of when Mary Anne Bell said "I just want to eat this place. Vietnam. [...] I just want to eat it and have it there inside me." It's something about this country and this time that has a profound effect on people, or that's how the author is describing it, that makes them want to feel one with the country: the landscape, the people, the violence. It's an odd connection that someone who is mentally sound would want but as one can read that at the end of the chapter, after all is said and done between Tim and Bobby, Azar wants to continue and goes as far as calling Tim "disgusting" because he's made his peace. I find it funny that Tim says to Bobby "Let's kill Azar."

Good Form / Field Trip

In these two chapters, it seems like the reader gets background information about the narrator but at the same time it feels like it's the author speaking. That's my one qualm with this novel: it's hard to distinguish between the narrator and the author. I feel that it should be the author speaking but it's not and I'm constantly reminded that this is a novel and that what I'm reading isn't necessarily true. Like in 'Good Form' when the narrator tells about the time when he watched someone die in My Khe and he feels guilty because of it but subsequently says "But listen. Even that story is made up." What am I supposed to trust? I get that this novel is supposed to be great and all but reading it further and further, it's just getting annoying with the perpetual storytelling and what is lies and what isn't; what to believe and what not to believe.

In the chapter Field Trip, the narrator takes his young daughter to Vietnam so she can explore the world and such but then he eventually takes her to where Kiowa died. In my opinion, that's really selfish to do because that was a place of strife and struggle and sadness and to expose a child to anything that you yourself harbor ill feelings towards is selfish. Even though Kathleen had no idea what the significance specifically was, it's still not fair. I didn't even know that Tim O'Brien was there when Kiowa died? Maybe I'm overlooking a bigger meaning but I was not impressed with this.

In The Field

Jimmy Cross's character is very interesting. He takes moral responsibility for other mens' lives and when one of them is lost, he blames himself which the results in an immediate overcorrection. In this case, it was making everyone search the "shit field" in search of Kiowa's body where as before with Ted Lavender's death, he burns Martha's picture. He is too connected to the war even though he claims that "the war meant nothing to him. He did not care one way or the other about the war, and he had no desire to command." He's obsessive over the men he commands and assumes too much guilt over their death. It's ironic that near the end of the chapter he kicks back and floats in the mud and filth that could be seen as letting himself feel what Kiowa felt in his last moments maybe and all the while he's writing and revising a letter that he's going to write to Kiowa's father about the man he thought Kiowa was and how Cross is at fault for his death. This is reminiscent of the letter that Rat Kiley writes to Curt Lemon's sister where he said the same things that Cross is planning to say.Writing, telling stories, and making jokes are reflexive coping mechanisms that go along with isolated company and boredom that also soothe in a crisis and subsequent death of a fellow soldier.

When the character of the young boy is introduced, I immediately thought it was Tim O'Brien but then the chapter goes on to give more detail that derails this assumption. I found this mysterious character curious and I question who he really is and what is his purpose other than to share the guilt or blame placed on Kiowa's death. So far it's three people that feel responsible but I agree with Norman Bowker's opinion in that it's "nobody's fault" but at the same time it's "everybody's." And I also think it's amusing that Azar actually apologizes for his comments about Kiowa literally "eating shit" as a way of death and that he feels guilty for saying those things because he feels like Kiowa was "listening."

Notes

"the best often die by their own hand
just to get away,
and those left behind
can never quite understand
why anybody
would ever want to
get away
from
them"

-"Cause and Effect", Charles Bukowski

This chapter is interesting because it reveals a lot about the narrator, and possibly the author, and about the character Norman Bowker. Much about Bowker's postwar life can be compared to O'Brien's trouble writing about it in his literature. Bowker's life wavered after the war and so did O'Brien's feelings about how he tried to explain it in his novel Going After Cacciato and eventually O'Brien cuts the chapter from that novel just as Bowker cuts his own life out of the picture. It's tragic that he never got to read this book. 

Notes also gives insight to the lives of both O'Brien and Bowker and their transitions from wartime to peacetime. Bowker obviously chose to lose touch with normal life that ends with his demise but O'Brien, however, gets along just fine and goes to graduate school at Harvard. I personally would find that hard to do after experiencing so much like Vietnam. 

Speaking of Courage

In this chapter there's a lot of "ifs" and "would'ves" and could'ves." The war is over and Norman Bowker is home and has no idea what to do with himself. He wants to tell his story about how he "almost" earned the Silver Star for valor but he doesn't. He feels that he he didn't have enough courage but really he did for being able to endure the war and come out alive. The title is ironic in the way that he didn't earned the medal for valor, that he wasn't brave enough to pull Kiowa out of the "shit fields." He fills his time at home by driving around and thinking  of what might happen if things would go they do in his head but it doens't mean anything because what happened has happened. He develops these stories about could happen because he is ashamed in a way that he didn't receive that medal. He wants to believe in it enough so that it comes true. It's his way of filling his home life now with the war he has become a part of.