Lonely Soldiers

One theme in particular that constantly emerges in Tim O’Brien’s war stories is isolation: the dangers of being alone and the importance or benefits of isolating yourself.   

In “How to Tell a True War Story”, six men are given orders to go on a listening-post operation. While they’re in the mountains for seven days, the men are told to nothing, just lie there and listen. After a period of time, they begin to hear noises. “And every night they keep hearing that crazyass gook concert. All kinds of chimes and xylophones.”  Eventually, they submit to insanity and reported an enemy movement. Isolation, even amongst others, plays a significant role in this story. It makes you wonder, what could the army have done differently to prevent this sort of insanity. 

Whereas in “The Man I Killed”, O’Brien is put into a situation where he needs to be by himself. After killing his perhaps first Vietnamese soldier, he begins to imagine what this man’s life was like before enlisting in the army. Based on little details such as his eyebrows. “His eyebrows were thin and arched like a woman’s, and at school the boys sometimes teased him about how pretty he was…they mimicked a woman’s walk and made fun of his smooth skin…” Although Kiowa tries to comfort him, O’Brien continues to stare at the poor man’s body. While in this state of tranquility, O’Brien tries to deal with the unpleasant reality of death and war. 


Finally, in “Speaking of Courage”, Norman Bowker comes home from the war and aimlessly drives around his hometown. He wanted to tell his story about his medals and how he almost received the silver star medal. This story was about his comrade Kiowa and the Song Tra Bong, a shit-filled river. I won’t go into details about this. He wanted to anyone: his old girlfriend Sally Kramer, his father, and long-gone friend Max Arnold. He begins to think about how he would tell his story and imagines what x reactions would have been. After his ninth drive around his hometown’s lake, he decides to park at drive-thru restaurant called the A&W. After taking his order, a worker asked him, over the intercom, if there was anything Bowker wanted to talk about. Given this opportunity however, Bowker decided to remain quiet and keep his story to himself. In the end, Bowker may be much more comfortable keeping his stories to himself. The title of this story is “Speaking of Courage”, yet Bowker never found the courage to actually tell his story to anyone, even if they were willing to hear it. Perhaps the death of his dear Kiowa left him in permanent mental isolation.