A Detailed Kiowa Character Analysis

Kiowa is an empathetic person and tries to understand every situation regardless of how dire it is. He is the one that offers comfort to O’Brien at the time he felt guilty about killing the soldier from Vietnam. O’Brien felt bad that the soldier had died due to his gun. Before that incidence, it is also Kiowa who helped O’Brien adapt to the new war front lifestyle. Kiowa carefully listens to O’Brien and understands his confusion as a person who is having the experience of a war for the first time.

Secondly, Kiowa is a good listener. He carefully listens to what O’Brien has to say about the Vietnamese soldier that he killed. After that, he offers working advice on the issue. Kiowa is also the first person O’Brien tells about the story of Linda. It is Kiowa that clearly shows O’Brien the importance of talking about the difficulties that one goes through in the course of the war. Dobbins also finds Kiowa someone he can talk to and listen. Dobbins tells Kiowa about how much he respects the clergy and his intention to become a monk. On the night Kiowa died, Dobbins had been giving him an account of the girlfriend he left home as he responded to the war call.

Trustworthy is also an adjective that can describe. This can be seen in the many people that trusted him with their stories. Some of these stories were personal, and people could not just let them out like that unless they were telling them to people they trusted to keep them safe. There is no case where Kiowa tells anyone else about the stories he gets from the other soldiers like O’Brien and Dobbins. That is more reason why they trust him with the stories of their personal lives.

He is a practical person. First, he understands that the situation of war is not easy and does everything possible to help others cope as much as it is not easy on his side either. The fact that he can overlook his difficult situations to help the other makes him a likable person. He also carries moccasins so that he can walk silently and not alert the enemies of their whereabouts. Until his death in the sewage field, he is someone the rest of the soldiers look up to for inspiration and consolation during hard times.