"Now, looking out at the field, I wondered if it was all a mistake. Everything was too ordinary. A quiet sunny day, and the field was not the field I remembered. I pictured Kiowa's face, the way he used to smile, but all I felt was the awkwardness of remembering." (p. 176)
In truth, I would like to label more or less all of this novel as a flashback. O'Brien constantly looks back to his past throughout this novel. However, we are brought back to the present by his comments or his description of things in the less distant past. O'Brien also frequently diverges into another story directly in the middle of the one he is telling, usually to clarify. I believe this too is a form of a flashback. After all, he has changed courses and goes farther back into the past. He also occasionally jumps to the future as well. All of the movement throughout the story actually helped me to pay better attention and kept the novel interesting. Without it, I do not know if I would have been able to read it so easily.
I guess the past is never really the past. It's always with us.
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