The Irony of Norman Bowker

In response to Speaking of Courage from The Things They Carried

Norman Bowker was a character in the book overtaken by the guilt of being apart of the Vietnam war. Early on, just like the rest of the characters, O’Brien introduces what he carries: “Norman Bowker carried  diary” (O’Brien, 3) and “Norman Bowker lying on his back one night, watching the stars, then whispering to me, ‘I’ll tell you something, O’Brien. If I could have one wish, anything, I’d wish for my dad to write me a letter and say it’s okay if I don’t win medals. That’s all my old man talks about, nothing else. How he can’t wait to see my goddamn medals.” (O’Brien, 35).

Norman got his medals, seven of them, although it’s up to interpretation whether or not he was awarded the Silver Star. Even though he came home with them, he questioned the validity and meaning of them: why was he being awarded for killing people and destroying their homes and villages? On the Fourth of July, Norman found himself aimlessly driving around the lake where his friend drowned before the war, thinking about what he would say to his old high school girlfriend and his father. When asked about what was going on, he couldn’t speak; he couldn’t tell his story, even though he so badly needed to tell someone what his experience as a soldier was. The irony of Norman Bowker is that he carried a diary; it’s never clear whether it’s his to write in or his to read, but he carried a tool that people used to deliver their personal stories. In the following chapter, Notes, we see Norman begging Tim O’Brien to tell his story because he was unable to. Norman could not coexist with the Norman that lived by the lake before the war and the one that found himself circling it afterwards.

The irony of Norman Bowker is that he was not welcomed back with parades and as a hero, and the chapter takes place on Fourth of July. He drove around a lake where his best friend drowned, thinking about how his fellow soldier, Kiowa, drowned in a field of waste. The reader has known Kiowa to be very religious, and instead of clean water bringing him rebirth, murky water is the subject of his demise. Norman Bowker ends the chapter by submerging himself in the water, and standing up to see the celebration of freedom in the sky.

The irony of Norman Bowker is that he could never cleanse himself from the terror he experienced or have any feeling of catharsis, so that not even clean water could save him.