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Runaway

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THE RUNAWAY, from THE THINGS THEY CARRIED AWAY Tim O'Brien, 1990

Author biography: A native of Worthington, Minnesota, Tim O'Brien graduated in 1968 from Macalaster College in St Paul. He served as a foot soldier in Vietnam from 1969 to 1970, after which he pursued graduate studies in government Harvard University, then later worked as a national affairs reporter for the Washington Post. He now lives in Massachussetts. Tim O'Brien is of the generation of writers who came of age during the Vietnam War era and his writing has focused on that turbulent period of American history with compassion and insight. He is widely recognized as the preeminent American novelist of the Vietnam experience and his novels have gained widespread critical and significant popular success because of their ability to translate the experience of wartime into perspectives on the largest questions of life and death.

The Things They Carried Away 1990 is both a collection of interrelated short pieces which ultimately reads with the dramatic force of a novel. A simple tale told from the perspective of one foot soldier, it depicts the men of Alpha Company, and, of course, fictional Tim O'Brien reappearing as a thread of continuity. He has survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of 43. The characters battle the enemy, or maybe more the idea of the enemy, and occasionally each other. In their relationship we see their isolation and loneliness, their rage and fear.
The Things They Carried Away is a testament to the men who risked their lives in America's most controversial war.
The title story won a National Magazine Award.
The passage entitled "The Runaway" is taken from a short story called "On the Rainy River" where Tim O'Brien develops his theory of courage:

Courage, I seemed to think, comes to us in finite quantities, like an inheritance, and by being frugal and stashing it away and letting it earn interest, we steadily increase our moral capital in preparation for that day when the account must be drawn down. It was a comforting theory.

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