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.

Stockings - Style

I like that Henry Dobbins believes in a tangible item as his protection and comfort rather than a false god; to me that is more powerful than religion. Also, I like that he wanted to be a minister but only for the compassion towards other people and that he didn't want to get tied up with explanations and such. That's like a subconscious rejection of organised religion and a belief in human kindness, something that isn't often prevalent in wartime. He just wants to "wear a robe and be nice to people."

In "The Man I Killed," Tim O'Brien describes the extremely gruesome way that some Vietnam boy looks and finishes it with "and it was this wound that had killed him." The description makes this death seem more important than most human deaths so far in this novel with the exception of the baby buffalo. Then, he goes into an imaginary story about who this boy probably was, only going off of visual aspects of his person. This is O'Brien's first kill and I suspect that it means more to him than anything at this point, taking another' life, that he would want to speculate on what he's taken. O'Brien describes "the star-shaped hole" in the boy's eye as "red and yellow" which could be a reference to the communist flag and this is a metaphorical death of such.
He didn't kill this man out of embarrassment not to but out of nothing else to do. He explains that he was on watch at night and this man rolls out of the fog and O'Brien just throws the grenade, already prepped to be thrown so he was obviously expecting something but he didn't think this man an enemy. It seems that he killed this man because that's what the war told him to do.

The dancing girl in "Style" is strange and it's creepy that she still finds so much joy in dancing when her entire village, more specifically, her family, is burnt into a crisp.

Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong

The story of Mary Anne's journey in Vietnam is thoroughly haunting in the way that an area of land can fully envelop a person and turn them into another. The metamorphosis of a young girl, someone my age, into a warrior, a "killer", is so poignant. I particularly enjoyed the character of Mary Anne Bell because she "came over clean and she got dirty and afterward it's never the same again." Being clean all the time is something that I personally strive towards but really I wish that I could relax more about it and just get over and Mary Anne is an example of being clean all the time and finally getting over it and becoming one with the jungle and the war.
The breaks in Rat Kiley's story telling refer back to the statement that he "had a reputation for exaggeration and overstatement, they give pause enough for you, and the soldiers he's talking to, to question the reality. However, it is best to ignore analyses and continue with the fantasy it creates.
I feel that it's better not knowing what exactly happened to Mary Anne because it adds to the allure that a mere girl can connect so fully with the vicious cycle of war and its casualties.

How to Tell a True War Story

The way O'Brien describes a war story makes it sound like a giant contradiction. He says that there is a moral but if there is you can never understand it because you have to actually be there to get the meaning. He says that war stories are never true. In the end he compares these stories to all of these contradictions that make the meaning of this story no clearer than when I started reading.

Rat Kiley and Curt Lemon’s friendship is interesting because Kiley is the medic and his best friend dies by stepping on a mine and being blown to pieces, something that Kiley obviously can’t fix; not even a wound that can heal but he ends up in pieces in a tree. His death is kind of symbolic in the way that he’s described by O’Brien as taking the “curious step from the shade to the sunlight” and then being blown upwards from the force of the mine could be seen as him ascending to heaven.

Rat Kiley brutally killing the baby buffalo was more disturbing than Lemon’s death. To me, this seemed like Kiley killed something so innocent in revenge for the Viet Cong killing his idol and his “soul mate.” Kiley doesn’t cope in the way that one should right away so he fights violence with violence. It isn’t until later where he pours his heart out and mulls over this letter that he writes to Lemon’s sister where he explains himself thoroughly and cries in remembrance, which is most likely the reason he’s do offended when “the dumb cooze” doesn’t write back.

Enemies / Friends

I enjoyed both of these chapters and found them to be both comical and tragic. The dynamic between Lee Strunk and Dave Jensen is funny because it doesn't seem right that a man would can beat down another man and break his nose would be so paranoid over them later. Jensen's paranoia could serve as a side effect of the war where you constantly have to be on guard of your life and I suppose he feels that he's wronged Strunk and Strunk deserves to be vengeful and it gets to the point where Jensen feels the need to call it even and break his own nose. Again, there is irony because Strunk did indeed steal Jensen's knife which incited the fight to being with, however, Strunk met his fate when his leg was blown off by a mine and he was the one who was paranoid that Jensen was going to kill him after they had previously made the pact to automatically kill the other if one should ever receive "a wheelchair wound."

On a Rainy River

The entire first paragraph of this chapter is worded in a way that builds excitement and incites a curiosity to continue reading. In my opinion it's almost anticlimactic in the way that the narrator makes it seem that he's about to tell a story about the time he murdered his neighbor but really he's recounting his fear and embarrassment about being drafted. Although this is the case, I enjoyed how this story gives detailed background information and establishes a point of view of one of the soldiers that have been present in this novel. I found Tim O'Brien's muted contemplation of escaping to Canada but only making it to the Minnesota border. Also I particularly liked the character of Elroy Berdahl who might serve as a foil to Tim's character as Tim is frantic for a decision to fighting but Elroy is old enough to have a great understanding of humans to not worry anymore. Tim changes in the way that significantly effects the way the rest of his life is going to be lived. If he had gone to Harvard and lived his life never experiencing something as a tremendous as the Vietnam War, who really knows the kind of person Tim would have become.

I found it very ironic that, at the time, a soft spoken being like Tim O'Brien would hold a job as gruesome as a pig declotter. It's ironic that this job which he describes as "standing eight hours a day under a lukewarm blood bath" is a precursor to war where you could be standing for 24 hours a day under a blazing sun watching the men and women and children around you die in an actual blood bath. The pigs that are decapitated, split down the length of the belly, pried open, eviscerated, and strung up by the hind hocks" would become human beings and it would all be real.

Love / Spin

“I want to know you moved and breathed in the same world with me.”
— F. Scott Fitzgerald

I am actually quite attached to the story of Martha and Jimmy Cross. That kind of romance fascinates me because it's so tragic and meaningful to know that one person can feel so much about another human being and at the same time are never able to know anything about them. There are so many questions that would be unanswered and it hurts when you realize that. When you become obsessed with the existence of someone else it does distract you from what is real and tangible and you focus on achieving that goal of nearness. You start making up reasons why you should be together and you look for them in random objects.

I think that Jimmy Cross feels so guilty after Ted Lavender is killed is because that event is what proves to him that she is another body that is living a life somewhere else and she is not thinking about him. Essentially, Ted Lavender losing his life is what forces Jimmy to take back his and burning all of Martha's pictures sets her apart from the war.

As the character Tim O'Brien is remembering his time spent in Vietnam, he reconnects to the people he shared that time with. He remembers the good and the bad. The war and the peace. The boredom and the action. To him, making these connections, and writing about them, is an obsession. He makes positive connections with all of what he experienced there, both the frightening and the mellow. Hindsight is 20/20.