Linda's Role In The Things They Carried

There were many different type of women in the novel The Things They Carried. These roles of women were displayed in Martha, Linda and Kathleen the most. In my opinion Linda has one of the most important/impactful roles in the novel. Linda is Obrien’s child hood first love. Unfortunately she died at the age of nine because of a brain tumor. After she died that had a huge effect on Obrien and he had a hard time getting over her death because he could not find a coping method. Linda’s role was so important because it encouraged Obrien to find a coping method for the empty hole he had in his heart that he was feeling .Linda forces Obrien to use his writing to cope with her death, by telling stories with the memories he had with her, keeping her name

You can see that that by him dealing with the loss of Linda, the same coping method helped him get over Linda’s death, also helped him while he was at war in Vietnam. For example when Norman and Kiowa died unexpectedly he quickly knew how to deal with it. As soon as they die Obrien tries to keeps their names alive by talking about them through some war stories. Linda was his prime motivator to help him believe that storytelling help aids the healing process of pain, confusion and the depression of death especially and unexpected ones.

Another role that women had in this story was to hold up to the very strict gender roles that were set out for them especially if you were fighting in war or dealing with a husband in the war. In the story “Sweetheart of the song tra Bong” especially you see where they describes the women that participated in the war. In this war, women ended up having to do non-traditional “women like “things to fulfil roles both physically and mentally. In "Sweetheart of the song Tar Bong" the character Mary Anne is flown down by her boyfriend to Vietnam. “She is dressed in "White culottes and a