NOTES

I LOVE THIS CHAPTER!!!!!!! It finally answers most underlying questions I had about the novel and its stories and the author himself. Tim O'Brien reveals to us the purpose of his writing..

"I do not look on my work as therapy, and still don't. Yet when I received Norman Bowker's letter, it occurred to me that the act of writing had led me through a swirl of memories that might otherwise have ended in paralysis or worse."

O'Brien confesses to his audience that if it were'nt for him letting out his grief and emotions about the war through his writings, he may have ended up like Norman. Norman was not a strange or different man. He just needed to talk. He needed some kind of reconciliation of his memories. Like the earlier motif mentioned, war just makes people do out of the ordinary things.