Speaking of Courage
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(Setting, Style) What contrasts does Tim
O’Brien establish between the lake and the swampy field where the platoon
camped? How do features of his style help point up the contrasts?
•
(Character) In what different ways is Norman
Bowker detached?
•
(Action) How does Bowker’s repeated drive
around the lake give the story both its shape and its symbolism?
•
(Ideas) What does this story have to say about
the nature of courage?
Notes
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(Setting) What sense does this account give of
the America to which the platoon has returned?
•
(Character) How does Tim O’Brien’s own
character emerge in the narrative?
•
(Action, Style) What contributions do the
extracts from Norma Bowker’s letter make to the piece?
•
(Ideas) Tim O’Brien has set out the account as
if it is a story in its own right. What features in it would allow us to accept
it as such?
In the Field
•
(Setting, Style) What effect do the references
to the golf course, and the style in which they are made, have on us as we
read?
•
(Character) How does Tim O’Brien establish and
sustain a sense of Kiowa’s character?
•
(Action) What effect do the switches of
viewpoint in the narrative have?
•
(Ideas) How does the theme of loss run through
this story?
Good Form
•
(Setting) What effect is produced here by the
single detail of setting (‘He lay in the centre of a red clay trail near the
village of My Khe’)?
•
(Character) Why does Tim O’Brien bring Kathleen
into this account?
•
(Action) How in this story does Tim O’Brien set
past against present?
•
(Style) How does Tim O’Brien use language to
shock us here?
•
(Ideas) Explain the paradox of the story’s
final two paragraphs.
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