The Things They Carried

One Sunday after the war, Norman Bowker drives in seven-mile loops around a lake in his hometown. Homes with spacious lawns line the road. He used to drive around the lake with Sally Kramer or his friend Max Arnold back in high school. Max Arnold drowned in the lake. Sally Kramer is now married, along with most of the other girls Norman knew from high school. The afternoon is hot; he imagines stopping by Sally’s house and impressing her with his ability to tell time just by looking at the sky. He imagines having a conversation with his father in which his father asks about the Silver Star and Norman responds, “Yes, but I didn’t get it. Almost, but not quite” (135). Norman might have then told him about the seven medals that he did get, before telling his father the story of how he almost won the Silver Star.

He would’ve first described the Song Tra Bong River. In the fall the rain fell for weeks and the river overflowed. The land on either side turned to deep muck, “[l]ike quicksand, almost, except the stink was incredible” (136). Norman imagines telling his father of one time when he wasn’t very brave. He continues driving around the lake and reflects that the quiet town he lives in “did not know shit about shit, and did not care to know” (137); Norman, however, “knew shit” (137). He quietly asks some men setting up fireworks on the lake if they’d like to hear about the Silver Star he almost won but they do not look up. He imagines telling them his story anyway.

One night in Vietnam, Alpha Company stayed in a field by the Song Tra Bong River. There was a village nearby, and two women tried to tell them that the field was “bad news” (138), but Lieutenant Jimmy Cross simply dismissed them. By midnight, the fields turned into a mushy soup “[l]ike sewage or something. Thick and mushy” (139). Eventually, they realized they were camping out in “the village toilet” (139).

During the dark, cloudy night, mortar fire erupted: “The field just exploded. Rain and slop and shrapnel, nowhere to run, and all they could do was worm down into slime and cover up and wait” (142). A few rounds hit close by and Kiowa started screaming. Norman crawled toward the screaming in the dark. Kiowa began to go under the muck; Norman tried to grab Kiowa by the boot and pull him out, but couldn’t: “He released Kiowa’s boot and watched it slide away” (143). He lifted himself out of the mud and lay still, tasting the muck and wanting a bath.

Norman continues circling the lake before pulling into an A&W drive-in around dusk. He orders a burger and a root beer and eats quickly in his car as it gets dark. He presses the intercom and tells the voice that he’s done with his meal. He starts to tell the voice something but changes his mind. The voice encourages him to talk, but Bowker chooses not to: “The intercom made a light sound of disappointment. Your choice, I guess. Over an’ out” (146). Bowker continues driving in circles around the lake. He decides “there was nothing to say” (147). He remembers taking hold of Kiowa’s boot but being repelled by the stench and in this way losing the Silver Star. The sky lights up with Fourth of July fireworks and Norman wades into the lake with his clothes on. He puts his head under and then emerges and watches the fireworks.

The narrator discusses, “Speaking of Courage” which was “written in 1975 at the suggestion of Norman, who three years later hanged himself in the locker room of a YMCA in his hometown in central Iowa” (149). The narrator had received a letter from Bowker in 1975 describing the difficulty of finding meaning in life after the war. He lived with his parents and worked briefly at several different jobs. In the letter, Norman encourages the narrator to write a short story about “a guy who can’t get his act together and just drives around town all day and can’t think of any damn place to go” (151).

The narrator reflects on his own transition from war to peace. For him, the transition was relatively smooth. Telling stories is an important part of that transition, comprised of “partly catharsis, partly communication” (151). He explains that “[b]y telling stories, you objectify your own experience. You separate it from yourself” (152). The narrator had once written a different version of “Speaking of Courage” which he sent to Norman. Bowker responded that the narrator “left out Vietnam. Where’s Kiowa? Where’s the shit?” (153). The narrator hopes that the version of “Speaking of Courage” published in The Things They Carried “makes good on Norman Bowker’s silence” (154).