A True War Story.... Never Seems To End by Lani Du Plessis

"Speaking of Courage" / Page 131 The war was over and there was no place in particular to go. Norman Bowker followed the tar road on its seven-mile loop around the lake, then he started all over again, driving slowly, feeling safe inside his father's big Chevy, now and then looking out on the lake to watch the boats and water-skiers and scenery. It was Sunday and it was summer, and the town seemed pretty much the same. The lake lay flat and silvery against the sun. Along the road the houses were all low-slung and split-level and modern, with big porches and picture windows facing the water. The lawns were spacious.

lpl2 — 2017-12-03 11:37:38 UTC

Katherine Drew: The alliteration of "Sunday," "summer" and "same" shows the monotony of his life back home as well as his difficulty adjusting/finding his place in his hometown. It hasn't changed much but he has changed dramatically.

"Speaking of Courage"/ Page 143 He would've talked about this, and how he grabbed Kiowa by the boot and tried to pull him out. He pulled hard but Kiowa was gone, and then suddenly he felt himself going, too. He could taste it. The shit was in his nose and eyes. There were flares and mortar rounds, and the stink was everywhere—it was inside him, in his lungs—and he could no longer tolerate it. Not here, he thought. Not like this. He released Kiowa's boot and watched it slide away. Slowly, working his way up, he hoisted himself out of the deep mud, and then he lay still and tasted the shit in his mouth and closed his eyes and listened to the rain and explosions and bubbling sounds.

lpl2 — 2017-12-03 11:37:47 UTC

"Speaking of Courage"/ Page 141 Still, there was so much to say. How the rain never stopped. How the cold worked into your bones. Sometimes the bravest thing on earth was to sit through the night and feel the cold in your bones. Courage was not always a matter of yes or no. Sometimes it came in degrees, like the cold; sometimes you were very brave up to a point and then beyond that point you were not so brave. In certain situations you could do incredible things, you could advance toward enemy fire, but in other situations, which were not nearly so bad, you had trouble keeping your eyes open. Sometimes, like that night in the shit field, the difference between courage and cowardice was something small and stupid.

lpl2 — 2017-12-03 11:37:55 UTC

I think the rain and cold in this passage are figurative. Rain as a motif often symbolizes gloom or depression; cold, especially paired with bones ("bone-chilling") often implies terror or dread. The author is saying, I believe, that it takes courage simply to live through the depression and terror that often comes after war. Perhaps, he is saying, it is too much to ask a soldier for any more than that. Different situations produce different reactions that make it hard to gauge what courage is and the conditions that allow for it.

-Matthew

"Notes"/ Page 149 "Speaking of Courage" was written in 1975 at the suggestion of Norman Bowker, who three years later hanged himself in the locker room of a YMCA in his hometown in central Iowa. In the spring of 1975, near the time of Saigon's final collapse, I received a long, disjointed letter in which Bowker described the problem of finding a meaningful use for his life after the war. He had worked briefly as an automotive parts salesman, a janitor, a car wash attendant, and a short-order cook at the local A&W fast-food franchise. None of these jobs, he said, had lasted more than ten weeks. He lived with his parents, who supported him, and who treated him with kindness and obvious love. At one point he had enrolled in the junior college in his hometown, but the course work, he said, seemed too abstract, too distant, with nothing real or tangible at stake, certainly not the stakes of a war. He dropped out after eight months. He spent his mornings in bed. In the afternoons he played pickup basketball at the Y, and then at night he drove around town in his father's car, mostly alone, or with a six-pack of beer, cruising.

lpl2 — 2017-12-03 11:38:05 UTC