“In Vietnam, too, we had ways of making the dead seem not quite so dead,” (pg. 238). Vietnam was a psychological war. It messed with your head. Every soldier involved either had a way to cope with it or they had no way to cope with it. The soldiers who had their various methods to cope with it were destructive to other soldiers. The soldiers who had no way of coping with it were destructive to themselves. Jimmy Cross had so much of his mind devoted to Martha, his girlfriend, leads to the destruction of the life of Ted Lavender. The young soldier turned on his flashlight to show Kiowa the picture of his girlfriend, causing the life of Kiowa to be ended. Norman Bowker had no way of coping with the things he saw in Vietnam. When he arrived home he thought so much of all the things that could have happened and he eventually couldn’t handle the stress any longer and ended up killing himself.
Jimmy Cross was way too wrapped up in his life with Martha to be the leader of his men. He had letters that he would sit up late at night reading and he even had a good luck pebble that he often placed in his mouth. “On the morning after Ted Lavender died, First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross crouched at the bottom of his foxhole and burned Martha’s letters,” (pg. 23). Jimmy Cross was a man who was not fit to fight the war. In his mind he had way too many images of Martha. His ill devotion to his men caused the death of Ted Lavender. If Jimmy Cross would have paid more attention to the soldiers under his command they would have had a better chance of living. Even throughout the book it talks about Jimmy Cross’ affairs with Martha and while he is thinking about her, other things are going on.
Many other soldiers in the war, besides Jimmy Cross, had a girl back home in which they relied on to get through the war. Another soldier under command of Jimmy Cross had pictures of his girlfriend that he stayed up late to look at. One particular night the soldier flicked on his flashlight to show Kiowa the picture. “He remembered switching on his flashlight. A stupid thing to do, but he did it anyway, and he remembered how Kiowa leaning in for a look at the picture---‘Hey, she’s cute,’ he’d said--- and then the field exploded all around them,” (pg.170).
With two characters dead the crew was demoralized. There was no way to cope with the deaths of their own men. When some soldiers come home they have no way to cope with the things they saw in war. They don’t have anyone to talk to, because no one knows or has seen quite the same things they have seen. In the case of Norman Bowker he returned home and had so much stress built up and had no one to talk to and nothing was the same as when he left. “‘Speaking of Courage’ was written in 1975 at the suggestion of Norman Bowker, who three years later hanged himself in the locker room of a YMCA in his hometown in central Iowa.” (pg.155). This quote shows that Norman Bowker could not live very long with his stress and he didn’t have any way to help that stress so he caused destruction upon his own self.
