One of the most important lessons that we each acquire as we grow up is the fact that there are a number of different ways of being brave, and that few of us has as great a measure of courage along any of the vectors of bravery as we would like to believe that we have. Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, which is simultaneously an exploration of American involvement in the war in Vietnam an examination of a single soldier's (and man's) feelings about himself, asks us (even as the author asks the narrator) to come to terms with different kinds of courage, and the costs of each. The book both emphasizes the traditional forms of courage - such as the ability to risk death - and less obvious forms of courage, such as the willingness to be different from others in a world in which conformity is highly valued. The narrator of the book displays a variety of kinds of courage throughout the course of the narrative, as well as a variety of kinds of cowardice, and as he is called upon to demonstrate each one he learns something about himself. The final word of the O'Brien on the nature of courage is that it is no one single thing, varying from person to person and from moment to moment. O'Brien understands that courage can take many different forms and even seem to mean many different things, but by the end of the book he has made a convincing case that whatever its outward appearance, on the inside, courage is the willingness and the ability to risk what is most precious to oneself alone for what is most precious to other people.
Although the subject of courage comes up repeatedly throughout the book, O'Brien addresses it most directly in a couple of chapters, "On the Rainy River" and "Speaking of Courage". In the former, which comes near the beginning of the book, both narrator and author explore a common experience: The fact that most of us like to consider ourselves brave and that most of us base this self-assessment on the fact that fe...