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Death In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

655 Words3 Pages
Death is an inevitable part of the life cycle. To bring those who are gone back to life, people must recreate their memories with the deceased through storytelling. In the novel The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien shows that when someone experiences a loss, by telling stories of the lost one it will keep them alive through the mind and help one cope with them being gone. In the first chapter, The Things They Carried, O’Brien demonstrates the theme of telling stories to cope with death by how the platoon members talk about Ted Lavender’s death, “Like cement, Kiowa whispered in the dark. I swear to God--boom, down. Not a word...A pisser, you know? Still zipping himself up. Zapped while zipping” (16). They go on in this chapter to repeat the
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