Dynamic Character

Norman Bowker is truly a dynamic character.

"He could not talk about it and never would (pg 153)."

Clearly, Bowker's experiences in Vietnam changed him fundamentally. He became cynical toward others only for the simple fact that he felt they could never understand him. He shut himself off to new things, feeling as though something had died in him in Vietnam. In the novel, he clearly states that he feels as though something died in him in war, which is certainly one of the biggest changes a human being can go through. At the beginning of the novel, one receives Bowker as a normal young man forced to fight in a war he didn't really understand and likely wanted little part of. At this point in the novel, he is depicted as a man whose will to live and experience all that he can is irrevocably diminished. He spends whole days driving around a lake, mentally asking random people if they would like to hear how he almost won a Silver Star. These are not the actions of a twenty-some year-old man at the peak of his life. These are the actions of a man who'd given up.