The chapter
"Speaking of Courage" of the book, "The Things They Carried",
focuses on Norman Bowker and his memories of Kiowa's death. The name of the
title is a little confusing, since the simple fact of Norman not saving Kiowa
is sort of cowardly, but then I realized it takes a great amount of courage and
strength to talk about someone's death, especially if it happened right in
front of you. During the Vietnam War there were thousands if not millions of
land mines and other hidden traps which gave the soldiers the constant fear of
being killed and that's what makes it hard for Norman to talk about Kiowa's
death because he knows that it could have easily been him who died in the war.
However, all of the soldiers exhibit examples of both courage and cowardice.
Tim O’Brien, for example, was considering jumping out of the boat and swimming across
the border into Canada in order to avoid going to war, which is saying he’d
rather be shunned by his family and never seen them again for as long as he
lives instead of fighting for his country and making it safer for his family.
Bowker says that if it wasn’t for the smell of the shitfield he might have been
able to save him, but just like he wasn’t able to save Kiowa he can’t stop
thinking about the moment that he let Kiowa drown in the field.
Sunday, May 27, 2012
Vietnam War
The US
aided the French by supplying them $1 to arm them with 300,000 small arms in
order to help the French train Vietnamese soldiers. The Vietnam War was a long,
costly armed conflict that pitted the communist regime of North Vietnam and its
southern allies, known as the Viet Cong, against South Vietnam and its
principal ally, the United States. The war began in 1954 (though conflict in
the region stretched back to the mid-1940s), after the rise to power of Ho Chi
Minh and his communist Viet Minh party in North Vietnam, and continued against
the backdrop of an intense Cold War between two global superpowers: the United
States and the Soviet Union. More than 3 million people (including 58,000
Americans) were killed in the Vietnam War; more than half were Vietnamese
civilians. By 1969, at the peak of U.S. involvement in the war, more than
500,000 U.S. military personnel were involved in the Vietnam conflict. Growing
opposition to the war in the United States led to bitter divisions among
Americans, both before and after President Richard Nixon ordered the withdrawal
of U.S. forces in 1973. In 1975, communist forces seized control of Saigon,
ending the Vietnam War, and the country was unified as the Socialist Republic
of Vietnam the following year.
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