When reading this chapter I was really surprised to see Kiowa, the peaceful Native American who serves as a foil to some of the characters in the story, suddenly killed. Surprisingly a character like her usually isn’t killed early in books. Kiowa’s death affects all of the men, especially Norman, and allows the reader to look within the mind of the troubled soldier after such an experience. This looking into of Norman’s mind is brought on by the way the story was written, which is through Norman’s narrative as he drives around his hometown post war. Switching back and forth between the story of Kiowa’s death and how Norman Baker is dealing post war allows this chapter to not only be about Kiowa’s death, but also how some characters deal with the death.
The chapter Speaking of Bravery shows not only how telling stories recalls the horror and pain of war, but also how this helps the soldiers to move on after the war. We see that O’Brien deals with his pain and guilt through his writing, but we also see that for some soldiers it is not so simple. Norman Baker is one of these soldiers. Norman drives around silently. There is no one he can talk to about the war, ironically because he cannot speak about the war with anyone. This is a result of his almost obsessive thinking about the incident and his own personal guilt for failing to save Kiowa. Another reason for the result of not speaking about the war is because of his father. His father wants him to go and get all these medals from the war when Norman just thinks they’re worthless and mean nothing.
O’Brien used the sewage field in the story to portray the war itself. There was nothing heroic about this war; instead, it is filthy and unclean. We see that in the end, just as Norman could not save Kiowa because of the stench, he could not save himself from the personal guilt of failing his friend. As Norman sits into the lake and submerges himself, he wishes he could go back and find the courage to pull Kiowa from the sewage mud.
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