Chad's Exploration Six

"At daybreak the platoon of eighteen soldier formed into a loose ran and began tramping side by side through the deep much of the shit field"(O'Brien, 155). In the Field was the story that affected me the most because this is the day after Kiowa died and the platoon are searching for his body. I affected me because i can just imagine these soldiers walking through a smelly field trying to find one of their own men who didn't make it out of there alive. "Jimmy Cross did not want the responsibility of leading these men. He had never wanted it" (O'Brien, 160). This story also had a significant meaning to me because this is when we find out that Lieutenant Jimmy Cross never really wanted the job of leading these men. So it kind of puts it into perspective that these are just kids at war who are scared and have been given such a great responsibility.

The character from the book that I feel i can relate to the most is Azar. Like Azar, I make a lot of serious situations into a joke as a way to make it easier to deal with. I find that we both are both scared to show our emotions so we hide behind sarcasm and jokes. For example when my friend was in the hospital last summer after being in a car crash we joked about the whole crash as a way to deal with the pain and emotions, the same was Azar does when Kiowa dies in the story.

I believe that Norman Bowker from The Things They Carried is a lot like Tim Brown from Rebirth. They both lost a good friend in a tragic way. But they both also feel as if they could have done something more to have saved them or that they should have been with them and died by their side. But something that is different is that Norman Bowker decided to kill himself because he just couldn't live with the pain anymore, whereas Tim Brown decided to use his friends death as motivation to better society and to live his life to the fullest every day he could.