“On his tenth turn around the lake he passed the hiking boys for the last time. The man in the stalled motorboat was gone; the mud hens were gone…The band shell was deserted…On his eleventh revolution he switched off the air-conditioning, opened up his window, and rested his elbow comfortably on the sill, driving with one hand. There was nothing to say.”
-The Things They Carried, p 146-147
In this chapter, O’Brien utilizes the image of Norman Bowker’s driving repeatedly around the lake as a motif throughout the tale. As O’Brien gradually reveals Bowker’s memory of Kiowa’s death, he weaves in the idea of Bowker driving along the town lake over and over again, disconnectedly observing the lives of the townspeople. After the war ends, Bowker returns home from Vietnam; yet in reality, Bowker has lost his home. The years have gone by, and the town has moved on without him. The war has affected him so that he is unable to share his experiences and emotions with others. Isolated in a town that does not understand his plight and simply does not care, Bowker is stuck in a rut, going in circles with no end in sight.
This circular motion is captured in the motif of Bowker driving around the lake. Even when he attempts to escape the circle by stopping at the town’s A&W, he is socially despondent and is unable and unwilling to open up to others. He returns to his circle around the lake, back into his cycle of withheld emotions and tortured reclusion. Just as the lake is constantly before Bowker, so are his memories constantly gnawing at Bowker, leaving him entrapped in a cycle of guilt and shame.
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