Bowker starts another loop around the lake. He wishes he could stop in and talk to Sally and impress her with his new skill—he can tell time without a watch, thank you, Vietnam. He wants to tell her about how he almost won the Silver Star for valor. He wishes his father weren't watching baseball and were in the car with him instead, so that he could tell his father how he almost won the Silver Star for valor. He thinks his father would understand. And besides, Bowker has seven other medals, which are ordinary medals for doing ordinary soldier things.
Bowker would tell him why he didn't end up winning the medal, telling him first about the Song Tra Bong, a river that in the monsoon season changed from a normal river to a big, stinky, overflowing muck. And that he would've won the medal if not for that darn smell. Bowker keeps driving through the town. He wants to tell it about the war, but it doesn't look like it would care. He continues with how he would have told his father about the Silver Star, saying that there was a night when the Alpha Company camped in a field besides the Song Tra Bong.
Locals told them not to camp there, that it was an evil field. But because the platoon had apparently never seen a horror movie, they went ahead and did it anyway. By midnight, the river had overflowed, and the rain made the field all oozy.
What's more disgusting, it turned out the field was full of sewage, the village toilet. If Bowker were telling the story to Sally, she would at this point be offended by the obscenity. His father wouldn't, though. Neither would Max. Sally Kramer, whose pictures he had once carried in his wallet, was one who had married. Her name was now Sally Gustafson and she lived in a pleasant blue house on the less expensive side of the lake road. He is a persevering person. Despite the things he went through during the war, he still manages to survive and come back home.
Even when back, he does not want people to see him as someone who likes complaining. Therefore, he struggles to fit in despite the hardships. He is thinking of Martha, of how she is leading a different life far away, and will never love him, and he hates himself for letting that distract him from his men.
He dies in a gruesome way, drowning under the muck of a sewage field about which his lieutenant, Jimmy Cross, has a bad feeling. We know more about Bowker at peace than we do about him at war. The only other personal thing he carries is a diary. Shortly thereafter, Bowker kills himself.
In The Things They Carried, Rat Kiley emotionally carries stories about the war, the responsibility for the lives of the men in the platoon, and the burden of witnessing violence and death. Skip to content Why was Norman Bowker driving around the lake? What does Norman Bowker symbolize? Why does Norman Bowker feel guilty?
Is Norman Bowker real? What does Norman want to tell his father and convince him of? Which medals did Norman Bowker win the most proud of Why? How does Norman Bowker feel after the war? Bowker imagines how he would tell his father the story.
A local woman warned against that place, but the soldiers set up there anyway. The place had a funny smell, and the soldiers soon realized it was the village shit field. Aside from the smell, it was low-lying enough to be hard to protect. When the enemy began to shoot at the platoon that night, it was all but indefensible. The mortar made the surface of the shit field move and bubble and released even more of the fishlike smell.
Kiowa was shot and killed that night, and his body sunk slowly into the shit field. At this point in the story, Bowker breaks off to think about how he would describe to his father the fact that his courage had failed him. Bowker saw Kiowa get shot. He saw him go down in the shit field, face first. The scene shifts back to his hometown, and Bowker takes a break from driving around the lake. He pulls up to a takeaway burger joint called Eat Mama Burgers.
After eating his meal, he considers telling his war story to the person working in the burger joint. They have a momentary connection, but Bowker decides to leave instead. He drives around the lake again, for the tenth time, and decides never to tell the story to anyone. He thinks his father would tell him to focus on the seven medals he already has. He imagines that his father would be proud of him anyways.
0コメント