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Why did Norman Bowker not pull over and talk to Sally Kramer?

The story "Speaking of Courage" in The Things They Carried is about the difficulty of both speaking and courage. In it, we follow Norman Bowker as he drives around and around the lake in his hometown, thinking about the war and the moment his courage failed him and he could not save Kiowa. It's clear that he feels guilt about this and even more clear that he needs to talk about it, and the war in general, as he keeps fantasizing about doing so.


He imagines going to his ex-girlfriend Sally's house to talk to her, keeping things light and not talking about the war too much, just showing off his wartime trick of being able to tell the exact time without a watch. He decides not to, though, saying,



"She looked happy. She had her house and her new husband, and there was really nothing he could say to her."



Like many of the soldiers who returned home after the Vietnam War, Bowker is having a difficult time reconciling his wartime experiences with everyday reality in America. Sally, with her nice house and new husband, cannot exist in the same world where Norman Bowker stood in a field of sewage and made the choice to let go of Kiowa and save himself. The war has made him an outsider in his hometown.


In the next story, "Notes," O'Brien tells us that Norman Bowker asked him to write a story about a man who feels like he's still stuck in the war and talks about how hard a time he's had adjusting. O'Brien realizes that telling stories has been a way to reconcile his war experiences, and that Bowker doesn't have any similar outlet to process war with. When he asks O'Brien to write the story, he says,



"This guy wants to talk about it, but he can't [...] I'd write it myself except I can't ever find any words, if you know what I mean, and I can't figure out what exactly to say. Something about the field that night. The way Kiowa just disappeared into the crud. You were there—you can tell it."



When O'Brien doesn't get it quite right, Bowker eventually hangs himself. His inability to open up and talk or write about his wartime experiences has allowed them to consume him.

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