Essay On The Raven And O Brien's The Things They Carried

Donovan Crowley Mr. Callaghan AP Literature & Composition May 2, 2024 Echoes of Loss & Memory Edgar Allen Poe’s iconic poem “The Raven” and Tim O’Brien’s famous Vietnam War novel The Things They Carried resonate with loss, memory, and the weight of the past, emphasizing how the tormenting presence of the past defines the present. Through vivid imagery and symbolism, Poe and O’Brien create a haunting atmosphere that reflects the psychological and emotional behaviors of the characters. While The Things They Carried is a war story and “The Raven” is a poem about a scholar and bird, both pieces of writing highlight the conflict between man and self when associated with grief and insanity and expose the distinction between truth and imagination

Nevertheless, O’Brien, who is the author, character, and narrator of the story, explains that “stories can save us” (O’Brien 225). Furthermore, he says, “I keep Linda alive. And Ted Lavender, too, and Kiowa, and Curt Lemon, and a slim young man I killed, and an old man sprawled beside a pigpen, and several others whose bodies I once lifted and dumped into a truck. They’re all about the dead. But in a story, which is a kind of dreaming, the dead sometimes smile and sit up and return to the world” (O’Brien 225). Moreover, O’Brien shows that while he and the other soldiers face adversity, the characters are resilient and grow from their challenges with war. However, sometimes memory can be misconstrued. The causal theory of reference explains that the transaction between a perceiver and the object is basic and linear, such as the structure of The Raven, and the theory provides a distinction between successful and unsuccessful remembering. On the other hand, simulation theory, as with the nonlinear writing structure in The Things They Carried, views both distinctions as concurrent in a simulation and imaginative—or not real in the present