Courage in the dictionary is defined as “Ability to do something that frightens one.” One thing that does remind me of courage are the soldiers who are willing to fight for our country and keep the American people safe. In this chapter “The Rainy River” in the book The things They Carried courage is defined as, “An inheritance and by being frugal and stashing it away and letting it earn interest.” This means courage takes time and effort it doesn’t come naturally.  Elroy Berdahl  leads O’Brian to call him the “hero of his life” by letting O’Brian make his own decision to go to Canada or Vietnam with no judgement. Although O’Brian doesn’t want to disappoint anyone such as his family or town (the community). Now, there are many heroes in our lives maybe that you know or do not know yet. A example for me such as my older sister she helped me through many hard times in my life and I’ve seen her go through many challenges that I am now going through. Most of the time, we do not think about our “heroes” or people we look up to everyday or as much, I believe heroes are a good thing because this helps us form in a good way such as looking up to someone. In our world and In this book The Things They Carried there are many examples of how War is a rough time for many people because it can cause many things such as trauma for the rest of ones life. O’Brian remembers on page (48) ” Late in the night I would lie there watching weird pictures spinning through my head.”  Moving on, I believe people can go into war as a coward but once they are actually done with their service or in the middle of service, they actually can realize they are stronger than they thought or braver thinking at first that they might day the first day or are just really scared. In this chapter O’Brian does have courage because at first he cares what others think and that the action of leaving will lose him respect of his family and community. O’Brian thinks the people he knows are gossiping about him in the local cafe. He cares very much of his reputation. Continuing in the book, later on O’Brian is upset on what influenced him to be so mad and angry over this stories he is remembering but today many people get courage to do things they might not want to do such as, going into the army or taking a test for college. Everyday without thinking about it we all are doing something courageous. Courage is all in the risk we take everyday like the examples I gave earlier.