Guilt

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

Page 12 of 99 · 20 per page

• From Shunned (2018)

  Months of therapy had guided me into some of these painful memories, and I was just beginning to comprehend how our family dynamics and religious rigor had gotten all mixed up and created a stranglehold on me. “And do you remember what a relief it was when he got baptized?” “Yes,” I said, and remembered how Randy wept as Dad was dipped briefly under the baptismal waters. At the time, his sensitive display made me appreciate the deep impact that growing up without a Witness father had had on him. I’d never seen such fragility from him. He seemed now to be filled with the same overwhelming emotions. Years had passed, and I’d assumed he’d released these feelings. I felt sick to my stomach, seeing how my actions resurrected old fears and familiar pain in him, as they had done with my sister. “Now we have to worry about you,” he said. “No one ever thought you’d become an unbeliever. You’ve always been one of the sane ones.” “I wouldn’t say I’m an ‘unbeliever,’ per se, just not a ‘believer.’” It sounded much better in my head than out loud. Randy rolled his eyes and shook his head. I decided to mount one last plea, because he was my big brother and I just wanted to be understood. “But, Randy, can’t you please just try to understand what I’m going through? Odd as it may seem, I’ve never felt more sane in my life. Haven’t you ever had a time in your life when you just knew you were doing the right thing, when you could feel it?” “Marriage and The Truth are not things to be so easily discarded,” he said, and a wave of heavy breaths started to overtake him a second time. He pushed the tissues to his eyes and managed to pull himself together. I was a catalyst for something bigger going on inside him. It seemed the only way I could make him feel better was to tell him what he wanted to hear. I was completely thrown off by his lack of compassion or attempt at understanding. I wanted him out of my car. The guilt of breaking up a family had been dumped in my lap, and it was clear Randy was speaking not just about Ross and me but about all of us—“the whole-fam-damily,” as my father would say. “Then we’re done here,” I said in a firm voice. “Really, I can’t take any more of this, at least not today.” I pulled one last Kleenex from the box on the dashboard and adjusted the rearview mirror so I could see my face. My eyes were beady and bloodshot. “Are you guys going to be able to come to dinner at my new place next weekend?” I asked, looking for some neutral conversation.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  18 As he also noted in later life, he found it difficult at first to dare to eat meat on Fridays, even though he firmly believed that fasting was bad for the health. 19 Luther deliberately chose a life of extreme mental and bodily mortification, and he undertook it with great seriousness. The monastery day was divided into regular sections with prayers to be said throughout. Sleep was broken in the middle of the night when the monks woke to say matins; there were further “hours” at six, nine, and midday, followed by nones, vespers, and finally compline after the evening meal. 20 Mass was said daily. There was some flexibility, however: If a monk fell behind in his prayers, he could catch up with them later. Some even paid other monks to pray for them, but it was a practice Luther did not countenance. Instead, he began to save up the week’s hours until Saturday, going without eating or sleeping and praying through the day and night to get them done. This schedule was not easy to reconcile with the concentration needed for academic work, something that Staupitz recognized later by freeing him from having to attend matins when he began to lecture in Wittenberg in 1508. Nonetheless, the severe asceticism took its toll: Luther was pushing his body to its absolute limits, losing weight and suffering periods of depression, so much so that he assumed he did not have long to live. Why did his religiosity take such an ascetic form? It seems that Luther, a naturally spontaneous, impulsive person throughout his life, deliberately chose a monastic environment to subordinate himself, and control his wishes and desires. By entering the monastery he had rebelled against his father and rejected the male identity and patriarchal power that was his to inherit. Instead he chose a religious life of learning but also of obedience that centered on physical mortification. He referred to his own punctiliousness and his competitive streak—it seems that he wanted to win in the holiness stakes. There was also a sense of overwhelming guilt, but it is difficult to guess where this came from. It may have had something to do with being the favored son, but this hardly accounts for the force of these feelings, and their all-consuming nature. Luther seems almost to have luxuriated in feelings of guilt, as if, by driving them to their extreme, he could experience a heightened devotional state of self-hatred that would bring him as close as possible to God. There was a pervasive silence in the monastery, with no talking after the evening meal. Strict Augustinianism was an extreme version of late medieval piety that focused on repetition and control of external behavior such as fasting.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Where Luther talked of spiting the Devil by getting married, Karlstadt wrote, “We, too, must overcome the Devil through suffering and through the truth which we have come to know. Through suffering we must subdue, break, and subordinate to the spirit our untamed flesh in order to assist hope, strengthen faith, and firm up the word.” Replying to Luther’s attack on him for wearing peasant gray, Karlstadt mocked the reformer’s predilection for wearing “scarlet, satin, brocade, angora cloth, velvet, and gold tassels”—a well-chosen barb, for Karlstadt knew how irritated Luther had been in 1519 at the Leipzig Debate when the citizens had given Eck the fine angora cloth that Luther had longed for. 53 Karlstadt, the former provost of All Saints who had once driven a hard bargain over how much his chaplain should pay him from the income of the Orlamünde property, now wrote: “Would to God that I were a real peasant, field laborer, or craftsman, that I might eat my bread in obedience to God, i.e., in the sweat of my brow. Instead, I have eaten from the poor people’s labors whom I have given nothing in return. I had no right to this nor could I protect them in any way. Nonetheless, I took their labors into my house. If I could, I should like to return to them everything I took.” 54 In 1524 he was not only idealizing peasant life: He was now also reaping the consequences of his theology for social relations, realizing how as a priest he had been complicit in the exploitation of the poor. For him, the Reformation was becoming a movement of liberation of the common people. He was not alone. T HE FIRST SIGN of disunity between Luther and Karlstadt had been their differences over the role of images. While Karlstadt urged that images must be removed as unscriptural, Luther did not think it was necessary to ban them all; he also insisted that only the established authorities should be allowed to remove them. This disagreement became a major cleavage in the Reformation, for while Lutherans would make rich use of images both in their propaganda and their churches, Zwinglians—and later, Calvinists—with their simple whitewashed churches, could hardly have been more different. By late 1524 the tensions centered on different attitudes to the Eucharist. It was not just a matter of personal animosity: Many evangelicals were unconvinced by Luther’s doctrine of the Real Presence.

• From A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell-Scott) (1957)

  ἐξᾶμαρτάνω, fut. ἤσομαι (now Hipp. 398. med.). To err from the mark, fail, c. part., ἐξ. παίων Xen. Cyr. 2.1, 16: absol. to miss one’s aim, Soph. Ph. 95; opp. to κατορθοῦν, Isocr. 154 Ὁ. 2. to err, do wrong, sin, absol., Aesch. Pr. 1039, Soph., etc.; opp. to εὖ ποιεῖν, Lys. 172. 36; ἔς twa Hat. 1. 108, Aesch. Pr. 945, Plat., etc. ; περί τινα Isocr. 63 E, 193 Ὁ; ἔν τινι ina thing, Plat. Rep. 336 E; περί τι Xen. An, 5. 7,333 ¢- part., ἐξ. διατρίβων Xen. Cyr. 3. 3, 56; c. acc. cogn., ἐξ. τι to commit a fault, Hdt. 3. 145, Soph. Ph. 1012, etc. TOY pin Pass. to be mismanaged, ἡ ἐξαμαρτανομένη πρᾶξις Plat. Prot. 357 D; ἐξημαρτήθη τὰ νοσήματα Xen. Eq. 4, 2; πολιτεῖαι ἐξημαρτημέναι (Fr. manguées), Arist. Pol. 4. 2, 3. ἐξᾶμαρτία, 7, an error, transgression, Soph. Ant. 558, Themist. 362 C. ἐξᾶμαυρόω, to obscure utterly, Hipp. 380. 52, Eur. Phaéth. 2. 64. ἐξᾶμαύρωσις, ews, 7, a wearing out, Plut. 2. 434 B. ἐξαμάω, to mow or reap out, to finish mowing or reaping, ἐξαμᾷ θέρος Aesch, Pers. 822, cf. Ag. 1655, Eur. Bacch. 1316; σπείρων .. κἀξαμῶν ἅπαξ sowing and reaping, Soph. Tr. 33:—metaph., τάντερ᾽ ἐξαμήσω will tear them out, Ar. Lys. 367; and in Med., τὰ σπλάγχ᾽ ἔφασκον ἐξαμήσεσθαι Eur. Cycl. 236 :—Pass., γένους ἅπαντος ῥίζαν ἐξημημένος (part. pf.) Aaving all the race cut off root and branch, Soph. ΑἹ. 1178. Only poét. [On the quantity, v. dudw.] ἐξαμβλέομαι, Pass. to miscarry, Hipp. 600. 36. ἐξαμβλίσκω, =sq., Ael. ap. Suid., Hesych. ἐξαμβλόω, to make to miscarry, νηδὺν ἐξαμβλοῦμεν Eur. Andr. 356 :-— in Pass. of persons, to miscarry, Ael. ap. Suid., etc. 2. to make abortive, metaph., φροντίδ᾽ ἐξήμβλωκας you have made my wit abortive, Ar. Nub. 137; to which Strepsiades retorts, εἰπέ μοι τὸ πρᾶγμα τοὐξημ- βλωμένον your abortive thought, Ib. 139, cf. Plat. Theaet. 150E; so, ὁ πυρὸς ἐξαμβλούμενος Theophr. C. P. 4.5, 3; ἰσχὺς ἐξαμβλοῦται Plut. 2,2 II. intr. to prove abortive, Ael. N. A. 2. 25 :—impers., ἐξαμβλοῖ a miscarriage follows, Arist. H. A. 6. 23, 5. ἐξαμβλύνω, to blunt, weaken, Diosc. 1. 88, Plut. Fab. 23. ἐξάμβλωμα, τό, an abortion, Artemid. 1. 51. ἐξάμβλωσις, ews, ἡ, a miscarriage, Hipp. 33. 17. ἐξαμβλώσκω, = ἐξαμβλόω, Diosc. 2. 196 :---ἐξαμβλώττω, Ib. 194. ἐξαμβρῦσαι, v. ἐξαναβρύω. eEGpelBw, fut. ψω, to exchange, alter, σαρκὸς ἐξαμείψασαι τρόμον having put away fear from one, Eur. Bacch. 607; ἄλλην ἄλλοτε χρόαν 494

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  86. WB 4, 1315, Sept. 3, 1528. 87. WB 6, 1902, Feb. 4, 1532; StadtA Witt, 9 [Bb6], 2, 201–5. It would eventually be sold in 1564 to the Elector by Luther’s three sons for 3,700 fl. WB 3, 911, 556, n.4. The Karlstadts stayed for eight weeks from the end of June. 88. Laube, “Das Lutherhaus,” 50–51; Neser, Luthers Wohnhaus, 48; Heling, Zu Haus bei Martin Luther, 13. 89. He was not, however, above writing letters while eating at table. See, for example, WB 6, 1994, Jan. 17, 1533(?)—this letter was a rambling discourse praising marriage to the former abbot Friedrich Pistorius, who was just getting married, and Luther signs off asking him to forgive the prolixity of someone who is enjoying his meal but is neither tipsy nor drunk. Katharina, who had grown up motherless and had been sent to the convent when her father remarried, was used to large households. 90. Treu, Katharina von Bora, 54. 91. WB 8, 3344, June 4, 1539: Johann Schneidewein lived with the Luthers, paying board for nearly ten years, and had to be pried out, marrying the daughter of the goldsmith and sometime partner of Cranach, Christian Döring. WB 8, 3401, Nov. 7, 1539, mentions Wolfgang Schiefer, another Tischgenger (lodger). There were probably about ten servants. See Treu, Katharina von Bora, 45–54. 92. WB 10, 3963, Jan. 29, 1544, 520:21–22; 16–17. When Luther heard that Rosina was in Leipzig he wrote to the civic judge there warning him about her; if it was indeed Rosina, she should be banished. In an earlier letter, WB 10, 3807, Nov. 10, 1542 (to Anton Lauterbach in Pirna), he had written condemning her for almost glorying in the birth like an idiot. The solicitous concern for new mothers, the baptismal gifts, presents and advice, the lying-in celebrations, were all reserved for the “respectable” married women. For an unmarried servant-woman with a child, there were few options, and Rosina seems to have become a traveler. Luther does not speculate on who the father might have been—Rosina was to blame. 93. WB 6, 1836, June 1531; 1860, Aug. 26, 1531; 1862, Sept. 4, 1531: Luther tried to get the council to give Haferitz a payoff, so that at least Luther wouldn’t have to pay for his upkeep. Indefatigable, Luther was writing in November to press Hausmann to come to stay—he had a new vacant room, and he would not be a burden but a comfort: WB 6, 1885, Nov. 22, 1531. 94. WB 6, 3102, Nov. 13, 1536; 3103, Nov. 13, 1536; 3117, Dec. 14, 1536; WB 11, 4098, May 2, 1545; 4100, May 2, 1545; 4101, May 2, 1545. Luther refused to let Agricola himself darken his door, and complained that his daughter was more talkative and uppity “than is fitting for a maiden.” 95. WB 8, 3398, Oct. 26, 1539. He housed the children only briefly. 96. WB 6, 1868, Sept. 20, 1531. 97. WB 10, 3785, Aug. 28, 1542, 137:15. 98.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  One night I get gussied up for a book party Warren would rather have been shot than attend, and sunk in the cavern of a leather armchair, I hold my liquor enough to hear—from the mouths of poets—work I’m itching to read, books I can vanish down into from my grind. The night is a burst of sea spray washed across my face, tangible evidence of a fresh existence only slightly out of reach. Driving home in the spring rain, I imagine straddling my muscular husband in his desk chair and planting a soft kiss on his mouth. But coming through the back door, I enter the household’s tentative air, drawing back from the idea like a starfish to an underside touch. I find him typing a paper with the baby monitor on his desk. He glances over. How was it? Great, I say, and I burble out a summary. When Warren announces Dev’s been up feverish twice, the news stops me. However I long for a night off, taking one scalds me in guilt. Did you give him the antibiotic in his lunch box? I say. If he’d forgot I’d be up a point. You left his lunch box at school, I think— Shit, I say. It’s another black mark for me. —but it’s pretty much run out. His fever was over a hundred after Tylenol. We stare at each other to stave off the inevitable spat over who misses work. Warren’s down to his last few vacation days; I’d have to reschedule forty student conferences. But enough of the night sparkles through me that I say I’ll handle it, then I add, It’s good for me to get out every now and then. I hope so, he says. A few heartbeats keep me there in silence till I say, Was that sarcastic? He meets my eyes again, saying, Of course not. I start up the stairs and stop. I feel another urge to slide my arms around his strong middle and have him hold me, but if he withdrew, peeled my arms off—the refusal would’ve scorched me like a nuclear blast. I lean tentatively on the door jamb. Don’t you think I need to go out? You believe so, he says. Some rage burbles up, and from nowhere, I say—calmly but with force—That’s a shit thing to say. He shakes his head and says, You’ve had your night. Why jump on me now? Excuse me for having a life, I say. That’s the most fun I’ve had in months. It’s not all about fun, Mare. Just fuck you, I say, and bolt up the stairs. Storming into my study, I flip the side switch on the massive IBM computer, which starts to growl and grind. The monitor begins to blink awake. Inching through Warren’s edits on the book review I owe his journal, I seize up like the screen’s stalled cursor. I sit there ping-ponging back and forth between righteous fury and guilty shame.

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  Among the men there would be grumbling, of course, and maybe worse, because their days would seem longer and their loads heavier, but Lieutenant Jimmy Cross reminded himself that his obligation was not to be loved but to lead. He would dispense with love; it was not now a factor. And if anyone quarreled or complained, he would simply tighten his lips and arrange his shoulders in the correct command posture. He might give a curt little nod. Or he might not. He might just shrug and say, Carry on, then they would saddle up and form into a column and move out toward the villages west of Than Khe. Love Many years after the war Jimmy Cross came to visit me at my home in Massachusetts, and for a full day we drank coffee and smoked cigarettes and talked about everything we had seen and done so long ago, all the things we still carried through our lives. Spread out across the kitchen table were maybe a hundred old photographs. There were pictures of Rat Kiley and Kiowa and Mitchell Sanders, all of us, the faces incredibly soft and young. At one point, I remember, we paused over a snapshot of Ted Lavender, and after a while Jimmy rubbed his eyes and said he'd never forgiven himself for Lavender's death. It was something that would never go away, he said quietly, and I nodded and told him I felt the same about certain things. Then for a long time neither of us could think of much to say. The thing to do, we decided, was to forget the coffee and switch to gin, which improved the mood, and not much later we were laughing about some of the craziness that used to go on. The way Henry Dobbins carried his girlfriend's pantyhose around his neck like a comforter. Kiowa's moccasins and hunting hatchet. Rat Kiley's comic books. By midnight we were both a little high, and I decided there was no harm in asking about Martha. I'm not sure how I phrased 1t—just a general question—but Jimmy Cross looked up in surprise. "You writer types," he said, "you've got long memories." Then he smiled and excused himself and went up to the guest room and came back with a small framed photograph. It was the volleyball shot: Martha bent horizontal to the floor, reaching, the palms of her hands in sharp focus. "Remember this?" he said. I nodded and told him I was surprised. I thought he'd burned it. Jimmy kept smiling. For a while he stared down at the photograph, his eyes very bright, then he shrugged and said, "Well, I did—I burned it. After Lavender died, I couldn't ... This is a new one. Martha gave it to me herself."

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  The morning came up wet and blurry. Everything seemed part of everything else, the fog and Martha and the deepening rain. He was a soldier, after all. Half smiling, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross took out his maps. He shook his head hard, as if to clear it, then bent forward and began planning the day's march. In ten minutes, or maybe twenty, he would rouse the men and they would pack up and head west, where the maps showed the country to be green and inviting. They would do what they had always done. The rain might add some weight, but otherwise it would be one more day layered upon all the other days. He was realistic about it. There was that new hardness in his stomach. He loved her but he hated her. No more fantasies, he told himself. Henceforth, when he thought about Martha, it would be only to think that she belonged elsewhere. He would shut down the daydreams. This was not Mount Sebastian, it was another world, where there were no pretty poems or midterm exams, a place where men died because of carelessness and gross stupidity. Kiowa was right. Boom-down, and you were dead, never partly dead. Briefly, in the rain, Lieutenant Cross saw Martha's gray eyes gazing back at him. He understood. It was very sad, he thought. The things men carried inside. The things men did or felt they had to do. He almost nodded at her, but didn't. Instead he went back to his maps. He was now determined to perform his duties firmly and without negligence. It wouldn't help Lavender, he knew that, but from this point on he would comport himself as an officer. He would dispose of his good-luck pebble. Swallow it, maybe, or use Lee Strunk's slingshot, or just drop it along the trail. On the march he would impose strict field discipline. He would be careful to send out flank security, to prevent straggling or bunching up, to keep his troops moving at the proper pace and at the proper interval. He would insist on clean weapons. He would confiscate the remainder of Lavender's dope. Later in the day, perhaps, he would call the men together and speak to them plainly. He would accept the blame for what had happened to Ted Lavender. He would be a man about it. He would look them in the eyes, keeping his chin level, and he would issue the new SOPs in a calm, impersonal tone of voice, a lieutenant's voice, leaving no room for argument or discussion. Commencing immediately, he'd tell them, they would no longer abandon equipment along the route of march. They would police up their acts. They would get their shit together, and keep it together, and maintain it neatly and in good working order. He would not tolerate laxity. He would show strength, distancing himself.

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  When a man died, there had to be blame. Jimmy Cross understood this. You could blame the war. You could blame the idiots who made the war. You could blame Kiowa for going to it. You could blame the rain. You could blame the river. You could blame the field, the mud, the climate. You could blame the enemy. You could blame the mortar rounds. You could blame people who were too lazy to read a newspaper, who were bored by the daily body counts, who switched channels at the mention of politics. You could blame whole nations. You could blame God. You could blame the munitions makers or Karl Marx or a trick of fate or an old man in Omaha who forgot to vote. In the field, though, the causes were immediate. A moment of carelessness or bad judgment or plain stupidity carried consequences that lasted forever. For a long while Jimmy Cross lay floating. In the clouds to the east there was the sound of a helicopter, but he did not take notice. With his eyes still closed, bobbing in the field, he let himself slip away. He was back home in New Jersey. A golden afternoon on the golf course, the fairways lush and green, and he was teeing it up on the first hole. It was a world without responsibility. When the war was over, he thought, maybe then he would write a letter to Kiowa's father. Or maybe not. Maybe he would just take a couple of practice swings and knock the ball down the middle and pick up his clubs and walk off into the afternoon. Good Form It's time to be blunt. I'm forty-three years old, true, and I'm a writer now, and a long time ago I walked through Quang Ngai Province as a foot soldier. Almost everything else is invented. But it's not a game. It's a form. Right here, now, as I invent myself, I'm thinking of all I want to tell you about why this book is written as it is. For instance, I want to tell you this: twenty years ago I watched a man die on a trail near the village of My Khe. I did not kill him. But I was present, you see, and my presence was guilt enough. I remember his face, which was not a pretty face, because his jaw was in his throat, and I remember feeling the burden of responsibility and grief. I blamed myself. And rightly so, because I was present. But listen. Even that story is made up. I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth. Here is the happening-truth. I was once a soldier. There were many bodies, real bodies with real faces, but I was young then and I was afraid to look. And now, twenty years later, I'm left with faceless responsibility and faceless grief.

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  "Jesus, please," I said, but Azar lobbed over another one, waited for the hiss, then scrambled over to the rope we hadn't used yet. It was my idea. I'd rigged it up myself: a sandbag painted white, a pulley system. Azar gave the rope a quick tug, and out in front of Bunker Six, the white sandbag lifted itself up and hovered there in a misty swirl of gas. Jorgenson began firing. Just one round at first, a single red tracer that thumped into the sandbag and burned. "Oooo!" Azar murmured. Quickly, talking to himself, Azar hurled the last gas grenade, shot up another flare, then snatched the rope again and made the white sandbag dance. "Oooo!" he was chanting. "Star light, star bright!" Bobby Jorgenson did not go nuts. Quietly, almost with dignity, he stood up and took aim and fired once more at the sandbag. I could see his profile against the red flares. His face seemed relaxed. He stared out into the dark for several seconds, as if deciding something, then he shook his head and began marching out toward the wire. His posture was erect; he did not crouch or squirm or crawl. He walked upright. He moved with a kind of grace. When he reached the sandbag, Jorgenson stopped and turned and shouted out my name, then he placed his rifle muzzle up against the white sandbag. "O'Brien!" he yelled, and he fired. Azar dropped the rope. "Well," he muttered, "show's over." He looked down at me with a mixture of contempt and pity. After a second he shook his head. "Man, I'll tell you something. You're a sorry, sorry case." I was trembling. I kept hugging myself, rocking, but I couldn't make it go away. "Disgusting," Azar said. "Sorriest fuckin' specimen I ever seen." He looked out at Jorgenson, then at me. His eyes had the opaque, spiritless surface of stone. He moved forward as if to help me up. Then he stopped. Almost as an afterthought, he kicked me in the head. "Sad," he murmured, and headed off to bed. "No big deal," I told Jorgenson. "Leave it alone." But he led me down to the bunker and used a towel to wipe the gash at my forehead. It wasn't bad, really. I felt some dizziness, but I tried not to let it show. It was almost dawn now. For a while we didn't speak. "So," he finally said. "Right." We shook hands. Neither of us put much emotion into it and we didn't look at each other's eyes. Jorgenson pointed out at the shot-up sandbag. "That was a nice touch," he said. "It almost had me—" He paused and squinted out at the eastern paddies, where the sky was beginning to color up. "Anyway, a nice dramatic touch. Someday maybe you should go into the movies or something." I nodded and said, "That's an idea." "Another Hitchcock. The Birds—you ever see it?" "Scary stuff," I said.

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  As the novel developed over the next year, and as my own ideas clarified, it became apparent that the chapter had no proper home in the larger narrative. Going After Cacciato was a war story; "Speaking of Courage" was a postwar story. Two different time periods, two different sets of issues. There was no choice but to remove the chapter entirely. The mistake, in part, had been in trying to wedge the piece into a novel. Beyond that, though, something about the story had frightened me—I was afraid to speak directly, afraid to remember—and in the end the piece had been ruined by a failure to tell the full and precise truth about our night in the shit field. Over the next several months, as it often happens, I managed to erase the story's flaws from my memory, taking pride in a shadowy, idealized recollection of its virtues. When the piece appeared in an anthology of short fiction, I sent a copy off to Norman Bowker with the thought that it might please him. His reaction was short and somewhat bitter. "It's not terrible," he wrote me, "but you left out Vietnam. Where's Kiowa? Where's the shit?" Eight months later he hanged himself. In August of 1978 his mother sent me a brief note explaining what had happened. He'd been playing pickup basketball at the Y; after two hours he went off for a drink of water; he used a jump rope; his friends found him hanging from a water pipe. There was no suicide note, no message of any kind. "Norman was a quiet boy," his mother wrote, "and I don't suppose he wanted to bother anybody." Now, a decade after his death, I'm hoping that "Speaking of Courage" makes good on Norman Bowker's silence. And I hope it's a better story. Although the old structure remains, the piece has been substantially revised, in some places by severe cutting, in other places by the addition of new material. Norman is back in the story, where he belongs, and I don't think he would mind that his real name appears. The central incident—our long night in the shit field along the Song Tra Bong—has been restored to the piece. It was hard stuff to write. Kiowa, after all, had been a close friend, and for years I've avoided thinking about his death and my own complicity in it. Even here it's not easy. In the interests of truth, however, I want to make it clear that Norman Bowker was in no way responsible for what happened to Kiowa. Norman did not experience a failure of nerve that night. He did not freeze up or lose the Silver Star for valor. That part of the story is my own. In the Field

• From Shunned (2018)

  I was the last person to slip into Hannah’s ten-year-old Toyota Corolla. I was grateful for the familiarity of the crew, sisters with whom I had been in service innumerable times before. Vivian Schiller was in the front passenger seat, Chloe and I in the back. Vivian was discussing our wonderful “sweater weather” and then turned a motherly glance my way. “Linda, you’re quiet this morning.” “Just a bit tired is all,” I said. “I should have taken the morning off, but Ross and I made a family goal to get eight hours each this month in the field service.” “We missed you Thursday night,” Vivian continued. “You’ve been traveling a lot lately,” observed Hannah, glancing at me in the rearview mirror. “You must find it hard to manage that schedule and still keep up with The Watchtower and book study.” “I don’t mind,” I said. “The long plane rides give me quiet time to read the magazines.” The second the words left my tongue, I was startled to realize this was a bald-faced lie. I had not been reading the magazines on those flights at all. Instead, I usually prepared for the training sessions it was my job to facilitate. We lived in the suburb of Beaverton, Oregon, about five miles west of Portland. Hannah headed closer to the city and the affluent Skyline neighborhood. The Watchtower Society organizes the preaching work by putting congregations into circuits, and circuits into districts. Each congregation is responsible for evangelizing to all the households in its assigned territory, by breaking down the designated area into smaller, manageable sections, with maps cut and pasted onto numbered cards. Hannah had checked out this territory and over the coming weeks would do her best to find everyone at home, even if it meant coming back two or three times. She had turned onto a windy, well-manicured lane that could have been the inspiration for any Norman Rockwell painting. I had been here many times before. Passing a certain Frank Lloyd Wright–style home in the middle of the block stirred my memory. “Does everyone here know about Mr. Gavros in that brick house on the left?” I asked, as Hannah parked on the side of the street. “No,” said Hannah. “What about him?” “He’s a retired PSU professor and a hospitable intellectual. He always asks for the magazines, and I know he reads them because he likes to discuss points from past issues. But he’s never accepted my invitations to come to the Kingdom Hall. He’s a die-hard Methodist with no intention of doing anything else but talking. I saw him the last time we worked this. Can you two take that side of the street?” Vivian and Chloe agreed. “If you disappear for an hour, we’ll know Mrs. Gavros is serving you tea,” I said. “She’s a peach.”

• From Shunned (2018)

  Besides, I don’t have people in my life who get hung up on things like that.” She was so matter-of-fact. I envied her. I also started fantasizing about some of the men I was working with. I imagined sophisticated dinner conversations about business, art, or world events. I wondered what it would feel like to flirt, to express sensual longing and be coveted. These visions of romance became so frequent and intense, I feared I’d “committed adultery in my heart.” These dreamy episodes always felt plausible, if only . . . If only I didn’t have to go to all these meetings. If only I had more time. If only I earned more money. If only I belonged to a community that encouraged spiritual exploration. If only I didn’t have so many people counting on me to be good. If only the definition of “good” could be expanded to include detours. If only I could explore without being judged and worried over by all the most important people in my life. If only I were single. There—I said it. If only I were single. One common theme in all my fantasies was that Ross was not in them. The most disturbing fantasy came as I searched for a way out. I started daydreaming about receiving a phone call from the police. “Your husband,” the official, monotonic voice would say, “has been killed in a car accident. I assure you, ma’am, he suffered no pain. From the angle of the wreckage, we are absolutely sure he was killed instantly.” In these imagined episodes, I would experience intense sadness and months of grief and upheaval. But time heals all wounds, and then I’d be free. These fantasies generated a lot of guilt in me. One day, I mustered the nerve to share this twisted daydream with my therapist, seeing it as evidence of my cold, cold heart. She smiled softly and informed me this was a common and normal fantasy among people wishing for a divorce. Divorce. In the Witness community, it just wasn’t done. Marriage was considered so sacred, the only scriptural grounds for ending it were infidelity or death. No wonder I sought resolution in daydreams. Church policy did not recognize irreconcilable differences or growing apart as acceptable reasons to split up; these issues were often taken for spiritual weakness and evidence of a breach in the spiritual practices of study and prayer. One night Ross and I joined our good friends Erik and Marie for dinner and a movie. I was quiet and detached throughout the evening. Erik and Marie held each other’s hands; we did not. Marie laughed at Erik’s jokes; I stared off when Ross spoke. The conversation seemed bathetic and trivial. At my suggestion, we saw The Fugitive for a second time. It was my one guarantee of enjoying the outing.

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  I feel guilty sometimes. Forty-three years old and I'm still writing war stories. My daughter Kathleen tells me it's an obsession, that I should write about a little girl who finds a million dollars and spends it all on a Shetland pony. In a way, I guess, she's right: I should forget it. But the thing about remembering is that you don't forget. You take your material where you find it, which is in your life, at the intersection of past and present. The memory- traffic feeds into a rotary up on your head, where it goes in circles for a while, then pretty soon imagination flows in and the traffic merges and shoots off down a thousand different streets. As a writer, all you can do is pick a street and go for the ride, putting things down as they come at you. That's the real obsession. All those stories. Not bloody stories, necessarily. Happy stories, too, and even a few peace stories. ok Ok ok Here's a quick peace story: A guy goes AWOL. Shacks up in Danang with a Red Cross nurse. It's a great time—the nurse loves him to death—the guy gets whatever he wants whenever he wants it. The war's over, he thinks. Just nookie and new angles. But then one day he rejoins his unit in the bush. Can't wait to get back into action. Finally one of his buddies asks what happened with the nurse, why so hot for combat, and the guy says, "All that peace, man, it felt so good it hurt. I want to hurt it back." I remember Mitchell Sanders smiling as he told me that story. Most of it he made up, I'm sure, but even so it gave me a quick truth-goose. Because it's all relative. You're pinned down in some filthy hellhole of a paddy, getting your ass delivered to kingdom come, but then for a few seconds everything goes quiet and you look up and see the sun and a few puffy white clouds, and the immense serenity flashes against your eyeballs—the whole world gets rearranged—and even though you're pinned down by a war you never felt more at peace. What sticks to memory, often, are those odd little fragments that have no beginning and no end: Norman Bowker lying on his back one night, watching the stars, then whispering to me, "I'll tell you something, O'Brien. If I could have one wish, anything, I'd wish for my dad to write me a letter and say it's okay if I don't win any medals. That's all my old man talks about, nothing else. How he can't wait to see my goddamn medals." ok OK ok

• From A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell-Scott) (1957)

  is used just like αἰτία in the sense of cause, but not in that of accusa- tion. Til. an occasion, opportunity, αἰτίαν ῥοαῖσι Μοισᾶν ἐνέβαλε gave them an occasion, argument, theme for song, Pind. N. 7.16; αἰτίαν παρέχειν Luc. Tyrannic. 13. IV. the head or category under which a thing comes, Dem. 645. 11. (The word cannot but be from the same Root as αἰτέω, though the connexion of sense is obscure.) αἰτιάζομαι, Pass. to be accused, ἡ πόλις αἰτιάζεται Xen. Hell. 1. 6, 5, cf. 12; ἡἠτιάζετο τινός of a thing, Dio C. 38.10. The Act. is not found. αἰτίᾶμα, ατος, τό, a charge, guilt imputed, λαβεῖν ἐπ᾽ αἰτιάματί τινα Aesch. Pr. 194; τοιοῖσδε δήσε Ζεὺς ἐπ᾽ αἰτιάμασιν αἰκίζεται Ib. 255 ; cf. Thue. 5. 72.

• From A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell-Scott) (1957)

  πλημμελέω, to make a false note in music, cf. πλημμέλεια. 11. metaph, 20 go wrong, offend, err, τι in a thing, Eur. Phoen. 1650, Plat. Phaedo 117 Ὁ. al.; τοὺς ἑκουσίως καὶ δι’ ὕβριν τι πλημμελοῦντας Dem. 527. 27; περί τι Antipho 123. 10; εἴς τι Plat. Lege. 943 E; εἴς τινα λόγῳ Aeschin. 24. 3; with a ek πῇ οὖν τι πλημμελήσομεν ancien e+; Plat. Rep. 480 A, cf. Soph. 244 B :—Pass., πλημμελεῖσθαι ὑπό τινος Ady., —K@s διακεῖσθαι Id. -ποιία, 77, Ib. ; πλήθω ---- πλήν. to be ill-treated by one, Plat. Phaedr. 275 E, Isocr. 89 D, Decret. ap. Dem. 279.11; Kar’ οὐδὲν ὑφ᾽ ἡμῶν πεπλημμελημένοι Philipp. ap. Dem. 283. 20. πλημμέλημα, τό, a fault, trespass, εἰς τοὺς θεούς Aeschin. 68. 35, etc. πλημμελήσ, € és, (πλήν, μέλος) properly, out of tune, opp. to -ἐμμελής, cf. πλημμέλεια. IT. metaph. ἐγ discord, faulty, erring, ὁ ἀκράτως .7A. καὶ κακός Plat. Legg. 731 D; λίαν πλημμελὲς ἂν εἴη Arist. Eth. N. 1.19; ὁ. 2. of things, dissonant, discordant, unpleasant, ἦν τι mA. σε Spa Eur. Hel. τορῖ ; μή τι πλ. πάθῃς Id. Med. 306; ἐάν τι πάθωμεν TA, Plat. Rep. 451 B; mA. ἂν εἴη ἀγανακτεῖν Id. Crito 43 B, cf. Soph. 243 A :—Sup. πέστατος, Id. Legg. 689 B. Adv. -λῶς, Ib. 793 C; mA. καὶ ἀτάκτως Id. Tim. 30 A. πλημμέλησις, 7; a failing , sinning, Lxx (Esdr. Io. 19). πλήμμη, ἡ, ν. sub πλήμη. . πλήμμῦρα, ἡ, -- πλημμυρίς, the flood-tide, Plut. 2. 897 B, Anth. P. 9. 201, etc.; metaph., κακῶν Sext. Emp. M. 11. 157. πλημμῦρέω, to rise like the flood-tide, to overflow, be redundant, Hipp. 306. 55, Anth. Plan. 134, Plut. Caes. 22, etc.; of wind, Arist. Plant. 2. 6, 5; metaph., mA. πᾶσιν ἀγαθοῖς C. I. 4699. 8. πλημμυρία, dub. for πλήμμυρα in Schol. Pind. O. 5. 20. πλημμυρίζω, -- πλημμυρέω, Gloss. πλημμυρίς, (os, 7, the rise of the sea, as αὐ flood-tide, πλημμῦρὶς ἐκ πόντοιο of the wave caused by the rock thrown by the Cyclops, Od. 9. 486: the flood-tide (cf. paxia), opp. to ἄμπωτις (the ebb), mA. τῆς θα- λάσσης μεγάλη Hdt. 8.129; ἡ ἔξωθεν mA. Arist. Meteor. 2. 8, 7, cf. Strab. 155, Sext. Emp. M. 9. 79. 2. generally, a flood, deluge, Arist. Mund. 5, 11; of tears, σταγόνες .. δυσχίμου πλημμῦρίδος Aesch. Cho. 186; ὀφθαλμοτέγκτῳ δεύεται πλημμῦρίδι Eur. Alc. 184. 3. re- dundance, overfulness, of the fluids of the body, Hipp. Acut. 394. (Words of this family are commonly written with wy, upon the old deriv. from πλήν, pipw. Some critics write it with single μ, taking it to be derived immediately from 4/IIAK, πίμπλη-μι, v. Buttm. Ausf. Gr. §7Anm.17,n.) [ ἰπ the one passage where it occurs in Hom.; but in Att. 0, Aesch. and Eur. ll.c.; in later Ep. ὕ or v, as the metre requires, cf. Ap. Rh. 4.1269 and 1241: in πλήμμυρα, πλημμυρέω, πλημμύρω, D always. ]

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  should've taken one look and headed for higher ground. No excuses. At one edge of the field was a small ville, and right away a couple of old mama- sans had trotted out to warn him. Number ten, they'd said. Evil ground. But it was a war, and he had his orders, so they'd set up a perimeter and crawled under their ponchos and tried to settle in for the night. He remembered how the water kept rising, how a terrible stink began to swell up out of the earth. It was a dead-fish smell, partly, but something else, too, and then late in the night Mitchell Sanders had crawled through the rain and grabbed him hard by the arm and asked what he was doing setting up in a shit field. The village toilet, Sanders said. He remembered the look on Sanders's face. The guy stared for a moment and then wiped his mouth and whispered, "Shit," and then crawled away into the dark. A stupid mistake. That's all it was, a mistake, but it had killed Kiowa. Lieutenant Jimmy Cross felt something tighten inside him. In the letter to Kiowa's father he would apologize point-blank. Just admit to the blunders. He would place the blame where it belonged. Tactically, he'd say, it was indefensible ground from the start. Low and flat. No natural cover. And so late in the night, when they took mortar fire from across the river, all they could do was snake down under the slop and lie there and wait. The field just exploded. Rain and slop and shrapnel, it all mixed together, and the field seemed to boil. He would explain this to Kiowa's father. Carefully, not covering up his own guilt, he would tell how the mortar rounds made craters in the slush, spraying up great showers of filth, and how the craters then collapsed on themselves and filled up with mud and water, sucking things down, swallowing things, weapons and entrenching tools and belts of ammunition, and how in this way his son Kiowa had been combined with the waste and the war. My own fault, he would say. Straightening up, First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross rubbed his eyes and tried to get his thoughts together. The rain fell in a cold, sad drizzle. Off toward the river he again noticed the young soldier standing alone at the center of the field. The boy's shoulders were shaking. Maybe it was something in the posture of the soldier, or the way he seemed to be reaching for some invisible object beneath the surface, but for several moments Jimmy Cross stood very still, afraid to move, yet knowing he had to, and then he murmured to himself, "My fault," and he nodded and waded out across the field toward the boy. The young soldier was trying hard not to cry.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  This conviction was rooted in Agricola’s own experience, because “from my youth on I had an evil, timid and shocked heart and conscience, so that when I was young and went to school I ran to the monasteries and hermitages seeking comfort.” 37 The experience of overwhelming guilt and his liberation through the evangelical gospel was his touchstone, and he therefore described the Christian as undergoing an emotional journey of faith: “the preaching of the death of Christ shocks and depresses the understanding and conscience of man; that is, it teaches repentance. Whereas, the preaching of the resurrection of Christ raises up the conscience, shocked by the death of Christ, and restores the understanding and conscience; that is: it teaches the forgiveness of sins.” 38 This might appear like conventional Lutheranism, but references to “shocked consciences” were new and emotional terms, deviations from what had now become the established Wittenberg terminology. Moreover, Agricola was putting the Crucifixion in place of the Law, that is, God’s law, through which we come to recognize our sin. As Luther saw it, he was too quick to set aside the law of the Old Testament, the “law of anger,” as if Christians did not first have to come to a realization of their own sin as they failed to fulfill God’s commandments. Only then would they come to recognize and appreciate Christ’s saving death. Having spent so much energy over the last decade in developing definitive statements of the evangelical faith, he was increasingly defensive, unwilling to tolerate the slightest deviation or innovation. Agricola put the subjective feelings of the believer at the heart of salvation—something that Luther refused to do—and his theology, with its concern for troubled consciences, moved too quickly to focus on the forgiveness of sin and to relieve the individual’s misery. The reaction was harsh: When Agricola published three sermons with Luther’s own printer, Hans Lufft, in July 1537, they were seized, and the hapless printer was imprisoned. 39 Next Luther published Agricola’s theses on the law (which had been circulating secretly and were rumored to be critical of Melanchthon) in a broadsheet, much to Agricola’s alarm. Pointedly, Luther dedicated his refutation to Caspar Güttel, the preacher at Eisleben, and it was to Güttel, too, that Luther dedicated Against the Antinomians, which he published in 1539; it attacked Agricola and denounced those who rejected the Law as binding on Christians.

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  Moving away, the men found things to do with themselves, some smoking, some opening up cans of C rations, a few just standing in the rain. For all of them it was a relief to have it finished. There was the promise now of finding a hootch somewhere, or an abandoned pagoda, where they could strip down and wring out their fatigues and maybe start a hot fire. They felt bad for Kiowa. But they also felt a kind of giddiness, a secret joy, because they were alive, and because even the rain was preferable to being sucked under a shit field, and because it was all a matter of luck and happenstance. Azar sat down on the dike next to Norman Bowker. "Listen," he said. "Those dumb jokes—I didn't mean anything." "We all say things." "Yeah, but when I saw the guy, it made me feel—I don't know—like he was listening." "He wasn't." "I guess not. But I felt sort of guilty almost, like if I'd kept my mouth shut none of it would've ever happened. Like it was my fault." Norman Bowker looked out across the wet field. "Nobody's fault," he said. "Everybody's." Near the center of the field First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross squatted in the muck, almost entirely submerged. In his head he was revising the letter to Kiowa's father. Impersonal this time. An officer expressing an officer's condolences. No apologies were necessary, because in fact it was one of those freak things, and the war was full of freaks, and nothing could ever change it anyway. Which was the truth, he thought. The exact truth. Lieutenant Cross went deeper into the muck, the dark water at his throat, and tried to tell himself it was the truth. Beside him, a few steps off to the left, the young soldier was still searching for his girlfriend's picture. Still remembering how he had killed Kiowa. The boy wanted to confess. He wanted to tell the lieutenant how in the middle of the night he had pulled out Billie's picture and passed it over to Kiowa and then switched on the flashlight, and how Kiowa had whispered, "Hey, she's cute," and how for a second the flashlight had made Billie's face sparkle, and how right then the field had exploded all around them. The flashlight had done it. Like a target shining in the dark. The boy looked up at the sky, then at Jimmy Cross. "Sir?" he said. The rain and mist moved across the field in broad, sweeping sheets of gray. Close by, there was thunder. "Sir," the boy said, "I got to explain something." But Lieutenant Jimmy Cross wasn't listening. Eyes closed, he let himself go deeper into the waste, just letting the field take him. He lay back and floated.

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  I feel guilty sometimes. Forty-three years old and I'm still writing war stories. My daughter Kathleen tells me it's an obsession, that I should write about a little girl who finds a million dollars and spends it all on a Shetland pony. In a way, I guess, she's right: I should forget it. But the thing about remembering is that you don't forget. You take your material where you find it, which is in your life, at the intersection of past and present. The memory- traffic feeds into a rotary up on your head, where it goes in circles for a while, then pretty soon imagination flows in and the traffic merges and shoots off down a thousand different streets. As a writer, all you can do is pick a street and go for the ride, putting things down as they come at you. That's the real obsession. All those stories. Not bloody stories, necessarily. Happy stories, too, and even a few peace stories. ok Ok ok Here's a quick peace story: A guy goes AWOL. Shacks up in Danang with a Red Cross nurse. It's a great time—the nurse loves him to death—the guy gets whatever he wants whenever he wants it. The war's over, he thinks. Just nookie and new angles. But then one day he rejoins his unit in the bush. Can't wait to get back into action. Finally one of his buddies asks what happened with the nurse, why so hot for combat, and the guy says, "All that peace, man, it felt so good it hurt. I want to hurt it back." I remember Mitchell Sanders smiling as he told me that story. Most of it he made up, I'm sure, but even so it gave me a quick truth-goose. Because it's all relative. You're pinned down in some filthy hellhole of a paddy, getting your ass delivered to kingdom come, but then for a few seconds everything goes quiet and you look up and see the sun and a few puffy white clouds, and the immense serenity flashes against your eyeballs—the whole world gets rearranged—and even though you're pinned down by a war you never felt more at peace. What sticks to memory, often, are those odd little fragments that have no beginning and no end: Norman Bowker lying on his back one night, watching the stars, then whispering to me, "I'll tell you something, O'Brien. If I could have one wish, anything, I'd wish for my dad to write me a letter and say it's okay if I don't win any medals. That's all my old man talks about, nothing else. How he can't wait to see my goddamn medals." ok OK ok