Notes

This chapter made me very sad, knowing the Norman Bowker wasn't as content as he was portrayed in the preceding chapter. Also, I find the concept of suicide very intriguing and saddening. How you can control your own destiny is prevalent in the concept of suicide, where you can tell yourself you're ready to leave this world when YOU want. Man has the knowledge to take their own life, so we can control our destiny.

Tim O'Brien (who is a character that I feel neither here nor there about. He seems like the pessimistic, morose vet who just talks about life lessons that I imagine veterans to be like) is telling us about how three years after "Speaking of Courage" was written, Norman Bowker hung himself in a YMCA locker room in his hometown. O'Brien says how Norman wrote him a 17-page letter on how he wants O'Brien to write about the experience of Kiowa's death in the shit fields. When O'Brien includes a chapter about it in the book, it has to be omitted because it does not fit. Norman calls him about it, sounding bitter. And 8 months later, he kills himself.
I felt so bad that Norman wasn't really content with his life, and with the death of Kiowa. This chapter made me feel weird. Like sad, but that different kind of sad. A grief that you don't realize how it makes sense to you, but somehow it does.