Speaking of Courage: Almost

"When the girl brought his tray, he ate quickly, without looking up. The tired radio announcer in Des Moines gave the time, almost eight-thirty. Dark was pressing in tight now, and he wished there were somewhere to go." - p. 145

'"Hey, loosen up," the voice said. "What you really need, friend?"

Norman Bowker smiled.

"Well," he said, how'd you like to hear about--"

He stopped and shook his head.

"Hear what, man?"

"Nothing."' - p. 146

Those two passages both painted a picture of loneliness. The thing is, apart from the letter that Tim may or may not have received from Norman Bowker, he can't know just how Norman felt, and that reminds me of a game played on a road trip in the book Paper Towns called That Guy Is a Gigolo.

"In the game, you imagine the lives of people in the cars around you." - Paper Towns, p. 257

The guys discover that actually, their ideas about these strangers tells more about them, the highway-hypnotized teenagers, than about the strangers in the cars around them. It's a thing called projection. O'Brien has felt this way himself, and that is why he can portray it so accurately.

Those passages also reminded me of this song:

I think I also spotted some onomatopoeia in this chapter. Correct me if I'm wrong:

"The shells made deep slushy craters, opening up all those years of waste, centuries worth, and the smell came bubbling out of the earth." - p. 142

Slushy is a real word, but the sounds of which the word is composed are also the sounds a slushy field makes when one steps in it, which is what makes the word such a useful adjective. The same can be said of the word "bubbling," although I think it's an adverb as it's used in that sentence.