Near the end of Tim O’Brien’s novel The Things They Carried we are presented again with the idea that the soldiers in this book are being cowards. This is shown by this internal monologue given by Tim, “This little field, I thought, had swallowed so much. My best friend. My pride. My belief in myself as a man of some small dignity and courage.” (O’Brien 176) He is admitting to himself that he is not courageous and the fatal moments that occurred in this field could have been prevented had he been courageous enough to save his best friend. We are again shown that the characters are accepting that they have not shown courage, but they’ve shown cowardice by the dialogue, “‘You did a good thing today,’ he said. ‘That shaking hands crap,
