In the novel The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien, the author, is sending the reader a message of the power of war. O’Brien is saying that the war leaves a bigger burden than the heavy objects the soldiers had to “hump” during the war. In “Notes,” he shares with the reader the past of one of Tim’s friends from the war, and how his life was disjointed from it. In the chapter, Norman Bowker says in a letter that Tim should write about “a guy who feels like he got zapped over in that shit hole,” one “who can’t get his act together and just drives around town all day, and” how “this guy wants to talk about it, but he can’t” (157). Being tossed into the war left Bowker in one stage of his life, while everything else in his life back home moved on.
