“Lives of the Dead” is a short story written by Tim O'brien. In the story he writes many important life lessons about death and the death of people cared about by the narrator. O’brien writes in a way that makes sense to people and makes people understand a little bit more about what death may be like. Because nobody actually knows what death is like, a lot of people get interested by it, he writes about it in a way that seems like it wouldn’t be scary to be dead as long as the people are remembered. “Lives of the dead” teaches that it’s ok to grieve, because stories can save people and when people are dead there almost dreamlike, it teaches about what it's like to lose a loved one, and it teaches about holding onto hope. The story talks …show more content…
When he writes about Linda or anyone else that he has lost he describes then in such great detail that it is easy to see what he felt for the people he lost was real. O’brien writes “But she didn’t the room was silent. When I looked back at the casket, I felt dizzy again. In my heart, I’m sure I knew it was Linda, but even so I couldn’t find much to recognize…”(229). Because he loved her so much he didn’t want her to be dead so he imagined her as someone else. He tried to make the body fake and make her not dead so that he would be able to see her again and he wouldn’t lose her. Another quote was “So I followed her down the frozen pond. It was late, and nobody else was there, we held hands and skated almost all night under the yellow lights.”(232). After she died he was looking for a way to remember her and that was how he did, by imagining what they could of been if she was still alive. The narrator tries to imagine what their relationship would of been like if she had lived and they had stayed together. He wanted to have a perfect picture of their life together even after she was