In On the Rainy River, he describes the duplicity of war - the fear of war itself but also the fear of fleeing war and losing the respect of family and friends. I would not be brave. Life and death are similarly indistinct in war. The nature of identity surfaces here, the soldiers speaking of personality changes and the feeling of being separate from their former selves. By contrast, death's nearness accentuates life, making many who survive value more highly their existence and the world around them.
Incongruity is linked to the changing perspectives of war.
Stories need listeners, and one of the constant themes here is the inability of those back home to either listen or understand. Like many others, Bowker effectively loses his voice, and even when he suicides does not leave a note. If the soldiers lose their voices, they also develop a new language in order to cope. For a war story, O'Brien's collection is big on poetry and small on talk of hatred or enemies or military strategies or heroism. Jo-Anne Stubbings is the director of translation service Language Australis.