ipl-logo

Linda's Role In The Things They Carried

1094 Words5 Pages

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 …show more content…

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

Show More
Related
369 Words | 2 Pages

Linda is the name used to narrate Harriet Jacobs’s life story. Linda used to have a happy life with her parents and then was sent to live with her mother’s mistress when her mother died. Her mistress thought her how to read and treated her very well, but when she died Linda was sent to Dr. Flint’s house. Dr. Flint eventually tried to force Linda to have a sexual relationship with him but instead had an affair with Mr. Sanders in hopes it would disgust Dr. Flint and he would send her away to Mr. Sanders house. Instead, Dr. Flint sent her to a plantation to be a field hand and her children were soon to be sent to do the same.

Read More
532 Words | 3 Pages

Norman had felt as if he had no one to talk to or relate to because no one around him had experienced war like he had. He tried to keep jobs when he was home from war, but not one of them had lasted more than 3 weeks. Since he feels he is unable to speak to anyone about war, he writes a letter to O’Brien, telling his entire war story. He soon feels as if he cannot do anything without thinking about war and hangs himself in the locker room of his town’s YMCA.

Read More
1859 Words | 8 Pages

Although Norman was able to live through the war and go home, he was still haunted by Kiowa’s death and was unable to go on. He constantly fought throughout the war, only to go home to more and constant daily battles with himself. This is a way of self punishment and again wanting to relive and change the past which is impossible. This demonstrates PTSD since the soldiers are torturing themselves by reliving moments they can’t change. Also like how Tim O’Brien repeats the same phrase over and over when explaining how he shot a man and is unable to live with it, and only time can heal it.

Read More
313 Words | 2 Pages

Molly was waiting for the day when she, and other females, could be treated with high regard just as the men were. Women were forced to become temporary “head of the house” figures when their spouses went to serve for our country. When this happened, women were to take care of any farming,

Read More
667 Words | 3 Pages

For instance, if a loved one passed away and you were to tell a story about them like O'Brien did about Linda you would remember them and there would be an illusion that that person is alive again just like you would desire. Having an illusion where what you desire comes true can only happen in a story and that’s why they are essential for life. O’Brien shows another example of why stories are essential in the same chapter. In The Lives of the Dead O’Brien not only talks about Linda but he also talks the people that passed away from the war in Vietnam like Ted Lavender, Kiowa, and Curt Lemon. Another thing O’Brien says in this chapter is that he says, “But this too is true:stories can save us.

Read More
1368 Words | 6 Pages

Have you ever done something wrong? Did you try to place blame other places until eventually coming to the conclusion that it’s your fault? Of course you have your human. We try to do anything to get rid of that guilty feeling that comes from our conscious. This is also happening to the soldiers of Alpha Company in Tim O’Brien’s novel The Things They Carried, especially after one of their men dies in combat.

Read More
884 Words | 4 Pages

“In the spring of 1975, near the time of Saigon's final collapse, I received a long, disjointed letter in which Bowker described the problem of finding a meaningful use for his life after the war.” In this you see how after years later men were still struggling with issues from the war and reached out to each other for help. Although Norman did kill himself it was because he couldn't deal with his own guilt anymore for Kiowa. His brothers were always there for him and never left him, if they had known sooner they would have done everything to help him. Brotherhood is a forever bond.

Read More
1504 Words | 7 Pages

One event that seems to haunt him constantly is the death of his friend Kiowa. Years after the war, Norman continues to struggle with the images and atrocities of war. He even reaches out to O'Brien in a letter exclaiming, “the thing is,’ he wrote, ‘there’s no place to go. Not just in this lousy little town. In general.

Read More
656 Words | 3 Pages

The news of Linda’s death was delivered by Nick Veenhof when he said:” your girlfriend,... she kicked the bucket”(224). At first, the narrator could not understand what Nick was trying to tell him, that she was dead. But as time passed the realization that she was forever gone hit him. In order to process the situation, he imaged a situation where Linda would appear in dreams and speak to him about death.

Read More
1505 Words | 7 Pages

Already he had passed them six times, forty-two miles, nearly three hours without stopping” (O’Brien 139-140). As if Norman was stuck in a loop, he drove around that lake, reliving moments of his life from when he was in Vietnam. He questioned, doubted, and second guessed things that had happened. He wants to tell his story to his friends but they all moved on with their lives while he was in Vietnam in the war, leaving him with no one. He wanted to talk to someone but he couldn’t.

Read More
664 Words | 3 Pages

Christina Cobos Mrs. Peterson AP Literature and Composition 28 August 2016 Linda’s Exile in Brave New World Through the series of events that tore Linda from her home in London, landed her in the Reservation, and brought her back to "civilized society", Linda was able to experience the joy of motherhood and personal relationships she had been conditioned from birth to despise, but was also forced to experience the pain that comes from being an outsider not only in a strange world, but in your own home. Through the birth of her son, John, while living in the Reservation, Linda was able to overcome her conditioned response surrounding motherhood. While Linda is still ashamed of becoming pregnant and giving birth, she is able to admit that "Yes, a baby- and I was its mother" (Huxley 151).

Read More
1545 Words | 7 Pages

A female becoming a soldier or a spy or any kind of person that helped throughout these battles was unheard of. But there were so many women that did, some disguised and some not. The role that women held in the American

Read More
397 Words | 2 Pages

Charlie is a tomboy, and her life is great! She can do just about anything a guy can do, maybe even a little better! She can outrun, outscore, and outwit every boy she knows. Everything was perfect until she got pulled over.. Now she has to get a job to pay off her speeding ticket, but she isn’t having very much luck.

Read More
706 Words | 3 Pages

Obrien keeps the deceased characters Linda, Kiowa, Ted Lavender, Curt and Timmy alive, through his memories, dreams and stories. In Tim O’Brien’s “Lives of the Dead,” the loss of innocence and the power of literacy are both prevalent themes. Symbols are often used in a story to mean more than its literary meaning; Linda’s red cap, in “Lives of the Dead,” is a symbol of innocence’s. Linda’s innocence affected neither her illness nor death. Linda was O’Brien’s childhood girlfriend; when she first found out she was sick and had cancer, she began to wear a red cap, every day.

Read More
816 Words | 4 Pages

The author, Lorraine Hansberry, was the first playwright of the century to express real social issues. There are three female characters in the play, each one is faced with a different struggle for their freedom. All three of these women, Lena, Ruth, and Beneatha all dreamed of something more in their future. They did not want the life that every female was supposed to have, they wanted to be different. Beneatha has high aspirations in life and is the character that most expresses her struggles with feminism.

Read More

More about Linda's Role In The Things They Carried

Related Topics

Open Document