"In the Field"

Luke Binet

To be quite honest the first thing I thought of when I read the chapter In the Field was Easter Egg hunting. Every Easter children run through their front yard frantically in order to collect Easter Eggs and the goods that are in them. In this chapter, the whole squad is searching for their dead friend Kiowa who is buried in “shit” somewhere in a flooded field. Something about kids frantically searching for easter eggs reminded me of an army squad searching frantically for a long lost friend in a field of shit. Neither the little kids nor the squad would ever give up until all of the eggs were in their baskets.

The connection that I made to searching for Kiowa’s body and Easter Egg hunting led me to think about connections in character between Kiowa and Jesus. I found many ties between Kiowa and Jesus. Kiowa is described as the perfect warrior and an amazing kid. He carries a bible everywhere he goes, and he is a gentle and soft spoken man. Lieutenant Cross describes him as “...a fine soldier and a fine human being, a devout Baptist…(p.156)”. Cross complements Kiowa very often saying, “And Kiowa has been a splendid human being, the very best, intelligent and gentle and quiet-spoken. Very brave, too. And decent. (p.157)”. Jesus is also described as a model human being who is perfect. Kiowa might not be perfect, but he is a model citizen. Kiowa was friends with everyone in the squad and everyone respected him. Jesus also made many friends and was respected by many, however Jesus was also hated unlike Kiowa. I also found that Jesus and Kiowa died in similar ways. Both died a gruesome death for the things they believed in. Kiowa died supporting his country and the American cause, and Jesus died to relieve the people of their sins. Lieutenant Cross stated that Kiowa’s death was a “crime (p.156),” because such a good man did not deserve to die in such a horrible way.  Both were resurrected in the end. Kiowa was literally lifted up from the shit field, and Jesus ascended into heaven. One of the most ironic similarities between Kiowa and Jesus is that the people that felt responsible for both of these great men’s death ended up killing themselves. What is even weirder is that they both hanged themselves. Both Judas and Norman Bowker committed suicide because they felt guilty for their friend’s death. Jesus and Kiowa had lasting effects on the people they interacted with.

There is an overwhelming amount of evidence that O’Brien tried to relate Kiowa in a way to Jesus. Irony plays a huge role in the book The Things They Carried, and in this chapter irony is repeated over and over again.

Read more about the qualities of Jesus

"In the Field"

     In the story “In the Field," soldiers of the same platoon as a recently killed soldier named Kiowa, look for the dead soldier in a shit field. While digging through the muck, the remaining soldiers begin to try to place blame for the death. Though Kiowa was buried in a river of shit brought on by a monsoon, and nobody actually murdered the Native American soldier, the men feel the universal belief that it has to be someone’s fault. 

Lieutenant Jimmy Cross feels as though it is his fault, because he led the soldiers to the field where Kiowa died. His feeling of guilt is illustrated in the lines, “He would place the blame where it belonged...My own fault, he would say” (161-162). Numerous other soldiers, such as Norman Bowker and the young man who was showing a picture of his girlfriend to Kiowa just before the soldier died, feel as though it is their fault as well. So many of the soldiers believe that the accident is their fault, that the narrator states, “He, too, blamed himself” (162) referring yet another guilt-ridden serviceman.

     This idea of placing blame onto someone is a motif in many films, television shows, and pieces of literature. One movie in which this idea is prominent is in The Lion King. In The Lion King, a lion named Scar sets up his brother Mufasa’s death, but makes it look as though it were Mufasa’s son Simba’s fault. Wildebeest trample Mufasa, killing him, and from Simba’s point of view, it looks like an accident. However, Scar has fabricated the plan for the murder. He then belies his true intentions, comforting Simba. However, while consoling the young lion, Scar implies that it was Simba’s fault that Mufasa is dead. Simba feels guilty for something he did not do, and runs away, leaving the kingdom of Pride Rock for his loathsome uncle to rule.

     In both The Things They Carried and The Lion King, the characters are overwhelmed by the circumstances they are faced with, and feel as though the guilt has to be placed somewhere. Individuals will go to great lengths to find someone to place blame on before they place it on themselves. Therefore, once someone has blamed himself or herself, he or she rarely decides that he or she is not guilty. In Simba’s case, the blame is placed on him by another being. However, he does not dismiss the guilt, but accepts the blame, causing him to enter a morose state. Both of these stories show how the pattern of placing blame is a powerful one, and that rarely can an event happen without it being thought of as someone’s fault.

"Run Away Simba." YouTube. YouTube, 21 May 2010. Web. 16 Oct. 2013.

Field Trip

          Tim O’Brien’s story Field Trip is about a war veteran returning to pay homage to his deceased best friend. Kiowa died during the war after he drowned in the “shit field.” To O’Brien “[t]his little field…had swallowed so much.” (176). He talks about the loss of his best friend, his pride and his belief in himself. The field was a place of great meaning and importance to O’Brien. He returned because he wanted to honor his best friend by burying the moccasins where Kiowa had died. Additionally, Tim O’Brien wanted to show his daughter Vietnam, “…the Vietnam that kept [him] awake at night…” (176). This, in a way, is honoring the war and what enormous impact it had on O’Brien as a person both during and after the war. People often return to scenes of trauma for closure, to pay tribute or for remembrance. It’s not necessarily always a war zone that people return to, maybe a grave, museum or monument. In Field Trip O’Brien’s daughter, Kathleen, does not understand the meaning behind her father’s visit to My Khe, and therefore is slightly irritable. Events can have different impacts on different people, sometimes it has an impact on the next generation and sometimes it does not. In the movie, Schindler’s List, directed by Steven Spielberg, the work of Oskar Schindler does have an impact on future generations.

            Oskar Schindler was a German man working to save Jewish victims of the Nazis. In the movie, Schindler brings multiple Jewish people to work in his factory so they will not be sent to concentration camps. Today, the descendants of the people Oskar Schindler saved are incredibly grateful for his work. Without Schindler, thousands of people would not be alive today, he was responsible for saving the lives of over one thousand Jewish Europeans. The present-day descendants of Schindler’s Jews, as named in the movie, honor and thank Schindler by placing rocks on his tombstone. In the Jewish culture placing rocks on tombstones symbolizes permanence of memory, and such an important memory this is for a myriad of people. Oskar Schindler’s acts were audacious and unconventional, and therefore an amazing contribution in society. Schindler said “[h]e who saves one life saves the world entire.” This quote is incredibly powerful because in the eyes of the people whose lives he saved, he did indeed save their entire world.

            In both stories people travel to a place of great significance in order to honor a specific person. For Tim O’Brien it was his best friend, for Jewish Europeans it was their life-saver. Schindler’s altruistic nature is cause for celebration for thousands of present-day progeny of Holocaust survivors. Kiowa’s meaningful friendship with O’Brien  provided a way for O’Brien to gain closure and pay his respects. Thus, the death of two people, who were influential in two different ways, resulted in sincere commemoration. 

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Oskar Schindler - The Righteous Among The Nations. N.d. Photograph. Yad Vashem, Jerusalem.

"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.

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Ylvis. N.d. Photograph. Kloop.kg. Web. 15 Oct. 2013.

"Speaking of Courage"

In Speaking of Courage, Norman Bowker shows similarities in many ways to Tim O’Brien in the chapter, On the Rainy River. These chapters illustrate how the two men view courage, and how it applies to themselves. The young soldiers feel as though they have somehow failed, so they find a place to go to where they can just think to themselves about either their future or their past.

Both Bowker and O’Brien want to be brave, but feel like they have failed to do so. It is clear in Speaking of Courage that Norman Bowker wants to impress his dad but the thought that his father won’t be proud of him always lingers in the back of his mind. He constantly tells his dad about all the medals he won, and even lists all of them, then says, “They were for common valor[…] but that was worth something, wasn’t it?” (135) seeking approval. It’s clear to the readers that his dad is proud of him, because whenever Bowker says something negative about himself, his father will respond with something like, “You have seven medals(...) Count ‘em. You weren’t a coward either” (136). Even with responses like this, Bowker continues to think that he could have done better in the war and have been more courageous.

Similar to Bowker, O’Brien “fear[s] losing the respect of [his] parents” (42), but in his case, if he decides not to go to war. Bowker desperately wants to and worries about impressing his family, even though no one had ever told him that they were not impressed. He envisions himself being humiliated by the whole town in the case where he would not serve in the war, but this is what he really wants to do. He does not want to go to war because he knows he is just not that type of person, yet he cannot bring himself to make that decision for himself. He goes to war, and because he chooses to do what everyone else does, and makes the moral decision, he no longer thinks he is brave. O’Brien tells himself that “[he] [is] a coward” (58) because he did what he was told to do and decided to go to war.

Bowker also thinks of himself as cowardly, saying, “I wasn’t very brave” (136) and thinking, “he had not been so brave as he had wanted to be” (147). Both characters reflect on how they could have been brave, but chose not to, and that decision sticks with them.

Tim O’Brien and Norman Bowker find places where they can go to get away from it all, and have time to reflect. O’Brien reflects on his future and the impossible decision he is forced to make by traveling to the Tip Top Lodge, near the Canadian border. Bowker’s place is the road along the lake, where he spends time here looking back on his past in the war.

O’Brien needs to take time to be alone, without the pressures from his family, so he finds this lodge that is isolated from his community. Here he thinks of all the pros and cons of going to war and of doing what he really wants to do and staying away from it.

Just like O’Brien, Bowker finds an isolated place where he can spend all the time he wants to thinking about the war. He drives almost obsessively around the lake over and over again, and spends a majority of his time imagining scenarios where he would be talking with his father about his time in the war. He also imagines telling Sally Kramer about a horrible experience he had while at war. In both these cases, he realizes that no one will ever be able to understand what he went through, but he still feels the need to imagine these scenarios.

Both Tim O’Brien and Norman Bowker feel like they have somehow failed to be brave. Since they view themselves somewhat as cowards, it makes them insecure about how others will view them. They also both feel as though no one back at home would understand the difficulty of their situation, so they have a place to go where they can be away from everyone.

N.d. Photograph. New England History Teacher's Association. NEHTA, 4 Oct. 2013. Web. 9 Oct. 2013.

"Speaking of Courage"

In Speaking of Courage, Norman Bowker cannot stop thinking about his past in the army and even before the army. Like many other army veterans, Bowker had "no place in particular to go," so he drives along his father's neighbourhood (page 131). His old girlfriend, Sally Kramer lives in this neighbourhood, except "her name was now Sally Gustafson... She had her house and her new husband" (page 133). Bowker really wants to talk to her but cannot get her memories out of his mind; one day "he'd almost pulled over, just to talk [to her], but instead he'd pushed down hard on the gas pedal" (page 133). Bowker's memories show he still misses Sally when he almost stopped to talk to her.

Unlike Norman Bowker, Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) lost all his memory from a field accident. Bourne was rescued from the sea by fisherman, and spends the rest of the movie trying to figure out who he was and why there are people trying to kill him. On the contrary, Norman tries to forget these memories, except he cannot because his memories have become part of him and haunt him; Norman most likely has PTSD because of his symptoms.

Memories affect Norman Bowker and Jason Bourne.  Jason wants to remember his past; Norman, to forget his past. Norman even ends up having a pretend conversation: he talks to his dad about how he almost won the Silver Star. Bowker is upset he did not win the Silver Star, even though he did win "the Combat Infantryman's Badge, the Air Medal, the Army Commendation Medal, the Good Conduct Medal, the Vietnam Campaign Medal, the Bronze Star, and the Purple Heart... He would've explained to his father that none of these decorations war for uncommon valor... The routine, daily stuff--just humping [and] just enduring [the war]..." (page 135). The memory of how he almost won the Silver Star haunts Bowker so much he wants to talk to someone about it. Norman Bowker even considers talking to the town he is in, but "the town could not talk, and would not listen" (page 137). This shows how mentally unstable Norman is, he wants to talk to a town about his war experience; Norman is haunted by his past and can no longer keep all these gruesome memories to himself. He imagines telling his father his memory at the Song Tra Bong, as well as telling Sally Kramer and Max Arnold (his friend who died right before the war by drowning). Over half of the chapter is spent inside Norman's head, with him trying to tell his memories to someone. It is ironic because since we are reading he story, he is telling his memories from us, but he does not know that.

In The Bourne Identity, Jason Bourne slowly remembers his past, one memory at a time. The United States government does not know that Jason is just trying to remember his past, they think he has gone inept. According to the government, the only way to solve this problem is to eliminate Jason Borne by killing him; the United States activates all their field agents in attempt to kill Jason, but this plan backfired because Jason kills them, not knowing the United States Government sent these trained agents.

Jason and Norman's memories give them a disadvantage to their lives. Jason's loss of memory is his bane because he needs his memory of his past in order to live his life; Norman Bowker's memory is also his bane because of the pain it brings him. Bowker cannot move on from his past since he is still attached to it; his memories prove that he is an unstable person who needs professional help. Norman cannot forget about his past, leading him to almost talking to an intercom at a fast-food restaurant.