In “Notes” the narrator explains how he wrote the previous story, “Speaking of Courage.” It began as a war story but evolved into something different, a post war story. He started with the real story and added invented incidents that explained it. The time frame has been condensed into a single setting around a lake. An important alteration to the story is the removal of Kiowa’s death, which loses the war aspect of it. Without the death, it loses the emotional power that the real story had. Subconsciously O’ Brien removed the less than perfect aspects of the story and was left with a whitewashed version of it, one that left out the most vital setting, Vietnam. Norman Bowker wished for O’ Brien to tell the story exactly how it happened, including