Exploration 6: Joe Weingates

"Speaking of Courage" Meant the most to me for the fact that it shows how there is nothing glorious about the war. Specifically the story in this chapter when Kiowa died by sinking and then drowning in sewage. That shows how filthy and messed up the war was and that there is no glory in drowning in sewage. (I'm using a PDF online so I don't have the actual page number) "But the worst part," he would've said quietly, "was the smell. Partly it was the river—a dead-fish smell—but it was something else, too. Finally somebody figured it out. What this was, it was a shit field. The village toilet. No indoor plumbing, right? So they used the field. I mean, we were camped in a goddamn shit field.” The air smelled the ground smelled, they were camped in a sewage field, this war was dirty and disgusting, and inglorious for anyone who would die under these circumstances.

I Connect with Kiowa the most so far in this book. His rationality, quietness and devotion to his faith reminds me of myself. I feel if i was in war i'd be the same way as him, quiet and always trying to rationalize everything and have a bible on me because all you can do is read scripture and pray you don't die every day. He is quiet, Compassionate and practical in my opinion.

Tim O'Brien does a great job in the first couple pages of Speaking of courage with interior monologue to show how Norman Bowker is feeling towards his dad and the medals he achieved and almost achieved. You see now that Norman doesn't care about the medals as much as his father does. He more so wishes that he could have saved Kiowa, and get the silver star to make his father even more proud. 

"He would've explained how during the dry season it was exactly like any other river, nothing special, but how in October the monsoons began and the whole situation changed. For a solid week the rains never stopped, not once, and so after a few days the Song Tra Bong overflowed its banks and the land turned into a deep, thick muck for a half mile on either side. Just muck—no other word for it. Like quicksand, almost, except the stink was incredible. "You couldn't even sleep," he'd tell his father. "At night you'd find a high spot, and you'd doze off, but then later you'd wake up because you'd be buried in all that slime. You'd just sink in. You'd feel it ooze up over your body and sort of suck you down. And the whole time there was that constant rain. I mean, it never stopped, not ever."". This is a great example of scene and even sense. It was crazy how this paragraph made me visualize this field and how it would feel to be stuck there so vividly. It makes me realize just the kind crazy things that went on in Vietnam but are not always talked about.