Speaking of Courage

O’Brien is telling the story from Bowker’s point of view, and Bowker is still devastated by the incident of Kiowa’s death.  Bowker feels as if he is a coward because the guilt of seeing Kiowa die before his very eyes has driven him into a deep depression as well as suffering from PTSD.  However, by successfully telling the story to O’Brien, Bowker conquered the fear of telling anyone else how the event affected him.  This in itself is a courageous act.  This is in part related to a scenario told in “How to Tell a True War Story”, where a man jumps in front of a grenade in an attempt to sacrifice himself to save his friends, but the blast of the grenade kills all of the men.  Even though the person was acting somewhat foolish, sacrificing himself to attempt to save his friends, albeit unsuccessfully, is also an extremely courageous act.  It seems that O’Brien sees courage as dropping everything you stand for to do what you fear most, as Bowker did by retelling the story of how he felt about the death of Kiowa, and the hypothetical situation of the man killing himself to save his friends’ lives.