Things They Carried By Tim O Brien: Poem Analysis

Tim O’Brien used his friends and loved ones to show that death is not the end of someone. Wallace Stevens uses his poem to show how life goes on after death. Johnny Cash uses a song to show how people are remembered. As long as there is the memory of someone they are never gone. A person’s story is what keeps them alive years after they are gone.

In Tim’s book The Things They Carried he shows how his friend Rat mailed his deceased friends sister to tell her how wonderful of a guy he was, "I had a buddy in Vietnam. His name was Bob Kiley, but everybody called him Rat. A friend of his gets killed, so about a week later Rat sits down and writes a letter to the guy's sister. Rat tells her what a great brother she had, how together the guy was, a number one pal and comrade. A real soldier's soldier, Rat says” (O’Brien 64.) Rat’s friend will always live on with him in his memory and so will the deceased friend’s sister will know how good of a man he was. Another example that Tim uses to show that storytelling and memory keeps a person alive after they are gone is his first love Linda. “Lying in bed at night,

She’d say amazing things sometimes. ‘Once you’re alive,’ She’d say, ‘you can’t ever be dead’” (O’Brien 230-231.) He uses Linda to show us that even though she is gone Linda will always be a good memory to Tim. Also because Tim wrote about her in his book Linda’s story will be remembered by others forever. Her story will never die because of Tim. Tim earlier explained a dream he had of Linda, she compared her life before death as a book. She explained that every time someone talked about her or remembered her it was like