A Return to Vietnam

In the chapter Field Trip, there were multiple poignant moments for O'Brien that the reader experienced as well. As the reader traveled through the memories of Vietnam with O'Brien they experience his thoughts and feelings too. When O'Brien returns to Vietnam years later, memories overtake him. One place in particular that moves him deeply is the field in which Kiowa died. He returns to mourn the fact that such a small field had "swallowed so much. My best friend. My pride. My belief in myself as a man of some small dignity and courage." At this field, O'Brien begins to remember the horror of the war and the emotions that worked in tandem with it. When he places Kiowa's moccasins in the bottom of the river, he realizes that these emotions have returned because of the loss of a great friend in Kiowa; the moccasins are a huge gesture of the importance the soldier played in O'Brien's life. O'Brien also makes a point in this chapter through dialogue with his daughter, when she asks why he was even in the war in the first place. His reply, "I don't know. Because I had to be" reminds the reader again of the fact that O'Brien was drafted; he didn't care to be in the army in the first place. Making this point crystal clear is obviously extremely important to O'Brien.