Guilt as a Theme

In “The Man I Killed” and “Speaking of Courage”, guilt is a major theme, even if it is sometimes irrational on the part of those who feel it.

In “The Man I Killed,” O’Brien mourns over a man he just killed in My Khe. He cannot stop thinking about what this man’s life might have been like. He builds an idea of this man in his mind, which seems to be testament to the guilt he is feeling about killing him. What’s even more difficult for O’Brien in this moment is that his fellow soldiers cannot truly understand what he is feeling in this moment, even though Kiowa tries to comfort him. ““Listen to me,” Kiowa said. “You feel terrible, I know that.” Then he said, “Okay, maybe I don’t know (121).”” In battle, both O’Brien and this dead man were soldiers, but after O’Brien killed him, he no longer sees him as a soldier of war, but as his equal and opposite in many ways, a normal young man whose life was cut short because of his actions.

In “Speaking of Courage,” Norman Bowker traveling around a lake in his hometown, having returned from the war and having received many medals of honor. However, he is troubled because of an experience he had during the war where he left his friend Kiowa to die in the mud in order to save his own life. He feels guilty because as he sees it, this is not an act of courage. “Courage was not always a matter of yes or no. Sometimes it came in degrees like the cold; sometimes you were very brave up to a point and then beyond that point you were not so brave (141).” Bowker’s father is very proud of his son and his medals of honor, and this misconception of himself as Bowker sees it heightens his feelings of guilt about Kiowa.