Tim O’Brien’s comparison between his life and the characters in his books.
There is always that one moment in your life when something really exciting epic or even sad, and demoralizing happens to you. Whatever that moment is whether its embarrassing or exciting it follows you everywhere, like your shadow, because no matter what you do you will never forget it. It’s engraved in your memory for as long as you live. Many people try to erase the memory with drugs and alcoholic beverages. Others cope with the memory by writing it in their dairy or they write novels to share with others. This category of people is referred to as authors or writers. There are many authors that reveal their past experiences in their literature. “Stories are for joining past and future…” (Calpoly 1) is exactly what Tim O’Brien said regarding his book “The Things They Carried”, so we can infer that some of his past is revealed in his short story “Speaking of Courage.”
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Tim O’Brien was born in Austin, but he did not live there for long. At the age of four he and his family moved to Worthington. Worthington was not like New York City or Detroit because it wasn’t even a city. Worthington was a small unpopulated area; it was a small town in Minnesota (Kaplan 1). As we all know there is not much to do in small towns, which is what justifies Tim O’Brien’s remark about his hometown being boring (Calpoly 1). Although O’Brien’s hometown was small it still had a massive impact on him (Kaplan 1). O’Brien mentions something about the “Kiwanis boys” in his short story “Speaking of Courage”. The “Kiwanis boys” also showed up in his biography. He said my “hometown was filled with the typical Kiwanis boys….” (Calpoly 1). In the short story “Speaking of Courage” the main character Norman talks about how he would have someday told the Kiwanis club about his past experiences in the war. The Kiwanis club may have been a club that Tim O’Brien participated in, or maybe it was a club that he wanted to participate in. Whatever the case the word Kiwanis seemed to be in both the book and his biography. Tim O’Brien may have change the saying in the book from “Kiwanis boys” to the “Kiwanis club”, but we can still say that whoever the “Kiwanis boys” are, they were taken from his past and but into his short story “Speaking of Courage” (O’Brien 144).
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Tim O’Brien was an author that spent much of his time alone with his stories. He always went somewhere to sit down and write (Kaplan 6). He was always thinking about his experiences in the war, but he never talked about them (Kaplan 4). The only way he expressed his wartime experiences was through writing his novels. In the short story “Speaking of Courage” Norman the main character throughout the whole entire book was talking to himself. The only time he wasn’t was when he went to a fast food restaurant and actually talked to order his burger (O’Brien 151). Throughout the whole book he was talking to himself about the war and what he would say to the people in his life if he was talking to them (O’Brien 145). In the book it seems like everyone is busy with their own lives (O’Brien 139). So Norman never asks to talk to anyone because they seem busy. Tim O’Brien is also like Norman in some way because he lives most of his life in his head (Kaplan 7). Just like Norman in the short story “Speaking of Courage” where he imagines what everyone would say if they heard his war story. Norman in the story seems to be afraid of confrontation and what people may think of him, because he sort of makes up excuses why he can’t share his story with the people he knows. He explains how his father is watching a baseball game at the house and he really doesn’t want to talk to him because he thinks his dad will be disappointed. Then another chance reveals itself to express his feelings when he stops by Sally Gustafson house but he says that she is to busy with her marriage life and even if she listened, she wouldn’t like the way he would have expressed himself (O’Brien 139). Finally he convinces himself that the town is not interested in what he has to say because they simply did not care to know(O’Brien 143). So we can conclude that both Tim O’Brien and Norman Bowker both live most of their lives in their head.
Tim O’Brien was a soldier in U.S army in 1968 (Calploy 1). What was weird was that he entered the army, but participated in a anti-war movement at one time in his life(Kaplan 2). Tim O’Brien had many experiences in the war and we can infer that from all of the novels and short stories that he wrote. One of his experiences was when he got wounded; this took place in May 1969 (Calploy 2). He explains how the wound wasn’t a huge deal, he said it was “not a bad wound, but it hurt a lot….” He goes on to explain how the experience affected him, how frightened he was due to the experience (Kaplan 3). From what I now know about Tim O’Brien I could say that wasn’t his worst experience in the war. Maybe the experience that I’m about to share with you about Tim O’Brien’s life wasn’t the worst, but I be pretty close to say that it was terrible. In May 1969 Tim O’Brien saw a friend die at war (Calploy 2). In “Speaking of Courage” a short story Tim O’Brien wrote the main character Norman also as a friend die in the war. Norman goes on to explain throughout the book how this friend died. He says that it was in the field by the Son Tra Bong a river(O’Brien 144). He explains how it never stops raining and the foundation they were camped on turned to mush. Norman also says that that wasn’t the worst part the worse part was the smell. He compared the smell to dead fish and something else that he could not put his finger on at the moment. Finally one of his comrades figured out that it was in my terms the bathroom for the entire village. It was a feces field. Later on in the night Norman and his comrades are under attack and he explains what he sees. He says the “the field just exploded”, at one point Norma sees a man buried in the sludge which is the term he uses to describe the feces and mud. He continues to say that the only thing he could see was the man’s face, and notices that the man rolls his eyes and winked at him. He describes this moment as weird. Later on he hears somebody screams and he recognizes the voice, its Kiowa and friend. Like any true solider would do Norman goes and tries to save him. By the time he gets their Kiowa is way deep into the sludge. He grabs Kiowa’s boot and tries to pull him out but soon feels himself sinking. He says the smell and him sinking and the explosions were just to much and he can no longer tolerate all of it. So he lets go of Kiowa’s boot and watched him sinking into the waist. He gets himself out of the deep mud and listened to his surroundings. Tim O’Brien saw his friend die in the past and Norman also watches as his friend dies (O’Brien 148-149).
We can conclude that Tim O’Brien is an author that uses his past experiences in his story. Like he says, “Stories are for joining past and future…”(Calpoly 1) regarding his book “The Things They Carried”, so we can infer that some of his past is revealed in his short story “Speaking of Courage.”
Bibliography
Calpoly. “Biography Of Tim O’Brien.” Home – PREFACE: The Cal Poly Shared Reading Program – Cal Poly. 2002. Web. 2 Mar. 2011. .
Kaplan, Steven. Understanding Tim O’Brien. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina, 1995. Print.
O’Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried: a Work of Fiction. New York: Broadway,1998. Print.
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