The Story of Norman Is a sad and depressing story to read, but I think that this story is a very important chapter to read in the book, not just because it provides more background info to what happened in Vietnam when O’Brien was there, but it also provides desperately needed information on the topic of PTSD and how a solider acts when they return to normal living.
Not many people think that there is a transition between a solider life, back into the normal person, but there is. I think that every soldier has to deal with this, for some, this transition is harder than others. I also believe that there is a percentage of people who never completely adapt to the new life of an everyday citizen. Even if people don’t talk about their experiences and seem like they have pushed them far back behind them, in reality, those emotions of war could be right behind the fake smile that the put on. There is also a point where the way that these struggling soldiers can deal with these emotions is to let them out and tell people about their story, but the veterans struggle to tell people because nobody could quite understand what they went through when they were overseas.
That is exactly what Norman is struggling with. He is stuck between the life of a soldier and a citizen. I think that the 7-mile road around the lake represents this sense of not belonging in either of the two groups. Stuck in a path where he feels like nobody can help him and help him get out.
This happens to a lot of veterans and it is hard to pinpoint blame, but the most obvious would be how we train our troops. This is hard to argue because without hard and vigorous training our armies could become weak, but think that the way that you have dehumanized people to become that mentally strong is wrong and has an impact on the veterans that have gone through that. We can kind of see this same result in the Stanford Prison Experiment. This Phycology experiment only lasted for a few days but most of the kids involved in the experiment had long-lasting mental damage and compared to what soldiers go through its almost nothing. I think that after a solider goes through war, there should be a mental hospital that they also go through to make sure that they don’t reach a place that Norman ends up reaching the beginning of “Notes”.