The Lives Of The Dead By Tim O Brien

There are many ways people cope with the loss of someone. Some people go through the 5 stages of grief and others try to embrace the sad loss of someone and see good come out of it. Tim O’Brien wrote “The Lives of The Dead” in order to preserve the memories of the dead by telling the stories of their lives. When O’Brien brings up specific people there is a story behind it because this is his way of coping with the loss of them. For example, throughout the whole story he was in Vietnam. He talks about all the soldiers who would shake the hands of the dead people and talk to them after they have died. He did not like that idea so instead he would tell stories about them so he could keep their memories alive instead of mourning the loss of their

He was a soldier who witness a lot of death. When the other soldiers saw dead people they would shake their hands and greet them. Tim described this as “It was more than mockery. There was a formality to it, like a funeral without the sadness.” Therefor he did not think that the other soldiers were being rude and messing with the man’s corpse. It was just their way of handling the death just as Tim does when he dreams of Linda and tells the stories of the soldiers that passed away. Tim believed that by thinking of them and their stories that they would still be alive. Tim said “There is the illusion of aliveness”(p.40) when describing what its like to tell a story about a dream of someone or something, hoping that the person reading the story will dream it along with him. This is the difference between fact and fiction. Tim is trying to bring out the stories that are real to him and make them real to the reader. That is why he goes so in depth with telling the stories and really puts a bunch of details in them. Tim would refer to him at a young age by calling himself Timmy. He does this because he remembers the good times as Timmy, before he went to Vietnam and had to mourn the loss of his

This foreshadows the idea that Linda was prepared for death mainly because she knew it was catching up to her and she was not afraid of something she could not control. This also would augur the idea that she was sick because of the red cap she wore. When Nick Veenhof exposed her to the whole class, there was an epiphany in the story. The reason she wore the red cap was because she had a brain tumor. The story would have been different if Nick were to not be included because we would not have known how Timmy found out that she had a tumor. In this circumstance, Timmy was not able to react or ask any questions about it. He just had to support her and what she was going through. The meaning of how he found out would have changed because when he found out there was an exchange of silence between Linda and Timmy. With this silence between them he showed her that he still loves her even though she had just been embarrassed in front of the whole class. This also allowed Timmy to start to grow up faster and realize that the world he lived in was going to be hard for him because certain things like tumors would show up and ruin