Tuesday, October 15, 2013

"Notes"


In 2009, 149 US soldiers were killed in Iraq; while 304 committed suicide AFTER their service was completed.  This means the emotional effects the war left on these soldiers resulted in more than twice the number of deaths caused directly by the violence of war.
The legal system sends people to jail as a punishment for their crimes, because jail is considered a horrible place.  Yet, many prisoners who have served long sentences, commit crimes after their release in an effort to get sent back to jail.  For some people prison is easier, they don’t have to worry about the outside world, they fit in at prison, and they don’t have any taxes or jobs.  Many don’t know how to return to their old lives; how to face reality again.  The change is just too difficult for them to handle.
            Prison is a lot like war; you get so used to it, you don’t know how to NOT live in fear.  That’s how Norman Bowker felt after the war.  Life after the war was too easy and lacked purpose.  He was stuck-paralyzed.  He couldn’t relate with anyone because he didn’t know how to tell anyone how he felt.  Everything he did felt small and meaningless, and everything he said came out wrong.  He was unable to process his feelings and communicate them to others.  He couldn’t even understand his own feelings and comprehend what he had been through.  He no longer had someone giving him orders, and assigning him purposeful missions.  That’s why he wrote to Tim.  He wanted Tim to tell him what to do, to give him orders.  Norman wanted Tim to write a story about him for the sole purpose of reading the ending, to tell him what to do next.
            Tim O’Brien used his writing to speak for him, he got all of his emotions out on paper, he moved on.  Norman couldn’t do that.  He couldn’t form his thoughts into words.  So they were all bottled up inside him, eating him from the inside out; killing him. 
            What do you do when you’ve been to hell, but then came back?  Bowker couldn’t move on- he couldn’t recover.  In Bowker’s case, the recovery was harder than the war itself.  Once he gets O’Brien’s story, it’s not what he wanted.  It doesn’t answer his questions; it doesn’t fill that hole.  In the first story, the character is not like Bowker, and Kiowa’s death, which was such a huge part of Bowker’s life, isn’t even in it.  Once again, Norman couldn’t get his feelings across to anyone, because no one understood and he could not explain. 
            After Norman Bowker hangs himself, his mother tells Tim O’Brien that Norman “was quiet” and “didn’t want to bother anyone”.  But the truth is, he was reaching out, frantically, and desperately grasping for help, for understanding, for recovery.  Tim writes another story, this time better, what Bowker would have wanted.  He includes all the details and Kiowa’s death to make the story really about Norman Bowker’s life.
            When soldiers go to war they become totally different people than who they were.  War takes over them, and consumes them.  It leaves such a big impact, leaves such a big scar, some soldiers don’t ever really return from war.  They can’t seem to find who they were, who they used to be.  So much has changed, everything is different and nothing is the same.  Sometimes reality is too hard face, so they simply choose not to face it.
            Norman Bowker told O’Brien that he felt like he had died in Nam, that he wasn’t really living, and maybe he was right.  Maybe Norman Bowker never really did leave the war.  Maybe he didn’t want to.  Like those prisoners, war became all Bowker knew.  He didn’t know how to not be on a mission, to not live in fear.  Norman Bowker couldn’t face reality after the war, so he never did.

11 comments:

  1. Nice post! I love how you tie in prison as a parallel to war. I agree with you when you stress how soldiers and prisoners alike can become dependent on their environment due to the difficult transition to normal life. You also bring up a great point in that it is possible Norman Bowker did not want to leave the war. At first, this idea seems counterintuitive; war is horrible; nobody likes war. However, your support for this possibility is sound and I agree that it is likely Bowker craved the foundation and purpose war gave him.

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  2. Wow! This post is really well done! I thought your analysis of real-life war and semi-real war in TTTC was a great idea! Also, your description of Norman Bowker allowed me to notice things I had not previously noticed. I also think you addressed the subject of emotion after war very well as well. Great job!

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  3. This brought a really differenet perspective to what I thought before. I think it's great relating war to prison, because the two are very similar, not only physically, but psychologically as well. I think it's similar to Shawshank Redemption when a senior person in the prison gets freed, and he doesn't know what to do with his life after he leaves prison because he has been in there for so long, so he hangs himself.

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  4. This is great! Really clever of you to make that comparison between the soldiers and the criminals. That statistic of the number of suicides after war compared to deaths in the war is shocking and a really interesting topic and focus that you you chose for this blog post on this chapter. Job well done.

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  5. Great comparison! I had never thought about war like that until you brought that point of view up. In fact it makes me wonder that if you suffer from PTSD from war, could it occur with inmates in a different way? I also liked your statistic. It really helps to emphasize the point you are trying to make about how war is emotionally testing (I mentioned this in my post as well :)). Nice job!

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  6. I really liked this comparison you used. I have heard of people getting released from prison and not knowing how to live a normal life in the outside world. This works well with this chapter and also with the book in general, because the war changes the soldiers' lives. This is a very interesting blog post! Good job!

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  7. I really liked this comparison you used. I have heard of people getting released from prison and not knowing how to live a normal life in the outside world. This works well with this chapter and also with the book in general, because the war changes the soldiers' lives. This is a very interesting blog post! Good job!

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  8. Awesome! This is a really interesting post. I like how you related PTSD to prisoners going back to jail after their sentence is over. This post as very surprising; I never knew how many people committed suicide after war! Good job!

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  9. Great job hallie. You really brought the meaning of the chapter out in this post. Also the picture was soooo cool. I totally agree with everything that oyu said.

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  10. I love this blog post, Hallie! I think it is so interesting that prisoners would try to get back in jail after being released, as it seems counterintuitive, but the way you explain it, it makes sense. I also really like what you said about how Norman's mother said he was quiet, but in reality he was practically screaming out, he just couldn't find the words.

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  11. Great blog post Hallie! I really like the picture you used to show how many soldiers die in war and how many commit suicide. It's really said how there are about twice as men many soldiers committing suicide than dying in battle. I think you really showed in this chapter how soldiers are affected by war. They can't forget there memories from war and they don't know how to go back to their normal life. Good job of showing thatin your blog post!

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