He thought about the importance of the human being was violated with the blame on himself. All in all, O’Brien gets all these details from his imagination and from his guilt. After O’Brien killed the man
One thing that O’Brien carries is Linda, the love he had for her while she was alive with him, the love and longing he carries for her after death took her from him, in addition to the stories and dreams he fantasizes about having the love of his life back with him. What is important to O’Brien is that he remembers everything exactly the way he wants to remember and they way it helps him cope and heal, he understands that she has been taken from him “and yet right here, in the spell and memory of imagination, {he} can still see her” (O’Brien 232). Linda shows that love and death always go hand in hand, true love, the kind of love that nothing can stop, the kind that nothing can stand in the way off, will last until death breaks the mortal bond. The motif, if there is one in this tale, is that true war stories do not always deal with the grotesque violence of war and hell, they also deal with love, something that everyone carries with them beneath the surface. The most important thing for O’Brien is closure, the closure of knowing that she is dead despite his wildest dreams and fantasies, this closure allows him to be “young and happy,” (O’Brien 233) and also allows him to connect the love to the things they carried from the beginning of the journey that was this
In Tim O’Brien’s “The Lives of the Dead”, no one can die; everyone can live on in stories. This short story is about how to keep people alive through stories. In the war Tim has to cope with an abundance of death; this reminds him of Linda, his first love’s death. The guys in war with Tim would pretend the people never died telling jokes about the people who have died both the dead north Vietnamese and their fallen comrades.
At some point, all people must accept the harsh truth of mortality. When people realize it for the first time, they can go through a change in character. The young medic Rat Kiley, a character in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, exemplifies this. His reaction to the sudden death of his best friend Curt Lemon, as portrayed in “How to Tell a True War Story,” depicts the shift of character that accompanies loss. Moreover, it reflects the inability of soldiers to return to normalcy after experiencing the traumas of grief.
Although the soldier he killed was an enemy soldier, instead of vilifying him he was able to humanize the man. O’Brien was able to describe the physical appearance of the soldier and imagine her life before war. The author was able to portray an emotional connection and made the line between friend and enemy almost vanish. This was able to reveal the natural beauty of shared humanity even in the context of war’s horror. O’Brien is able to find the beauty in the midst of this tragic and horrible event.
“A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth” (83). The theme of “happening-truth” versus “story-truth” is a constant opposition Tim O’Brien uses to convey his “true war story” to his audience. Many times in the book The Things They Carried, O’Brien lies to the reader to attempt to give the reader realistic events, so they can relate to the emotions O’Brien felt during the Vietnam war. O’Brien makes it clear in the chapter “Field Trip” that a person who has not been to war cannot comprehend what it was like. He uses a fictional character, Kathleen, to be a stand in for the reader; she is innocent and free from the burden of serving in wartime.
I’m forty three years old, and a writer now, and even still right here, I keep dreaming Linda alive. And Ted Lavender, too, and Kiowa, and Curt Lemon,They’re all dead. But in a story, which is a kind of dreaming, the dead sometimes smile and sit up and return to the world”(213).This quote means that O’Brien got through hard times because he was saved from
Storytelling has such a large impact on all stages of life. Stories are told to teach a lesson, give hope, or get someone through a hard time. Tim O’Brien uses storytelling in his book, The Things They Carried, to teach lessons from war, and help readers understand about the baggage people bring to war. The publisher section of this novel has this warning in it, "This is a work of fiction. Except for a few details regarding the author's own life all incidents, names, and characters are imaginary” (O'Brien).
This is the first person that he killed while he was in the war. He stares at the man as he thinks about the life the man could have had before he killed him. O’Brien has tried to come up with a story for the man as a way to deal with his death. When getting over a death, many people also create stories to keep the person that passed away alive for them. This part of the book expresses to its readers how certain people deal with death and ways that they grieve.
By referring to himself when he says that “Tim [was] trying to save Timmy’s life with a story”, he is essentially trying to breathe life into Linda through stories, allowing his younger self to cope with the loss of his young lover. This is essential to his own wellbeing because he must create an alternate reality for him so he can slowly understand his own feelings of loss and death. Furthermore, the juxtaposition of the stories of Linda and the desensitizing war emphasizes the importance of stories as a coping mechanism because the juxtaposition shows the contrast between the realities of the situation and made up illusions that give comfort to O’Brien. The last line likewise demonstrates the intimate relationship between death and life because even when he “take[s] a high leap into the dark”, he eventually “come[s] down thirty years later,” showing there is little space from death’s hand, no matter how far one attempts to jump away. Even though O’Brien is only creating illusions for himself, he is keeping himself and Linda alive through his own confession that even though he is forty-three years old, he is still making up stories that Linda is
Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, a collection of short stories, tells the story of soldiers in Alpha Company, who were fighting in the Vietnam War. Moreover, these stories depict the soldiers’ experience in the war zone, as well as their lives after returning home from war. Woven throughout these stories, however, is the notion that the narrator may be exaggerating or even telling a fabricated story, in lieu of what really happened. As O’Brien describes, in a war story, “almost everything is true” and, at the same time “almost nothing is true” (77). Ultimately, Tim O’Brien tries to confuse and obscure the notion of truth in his stories in order to emphasize the true chaotic nature of war and the emotional impact of combat on those who
These soldiers devote their lives to the war, and sadly they are easily forgotten. But for Tim O’Brien and various other authors, “We kept the dead alive with stories” (239). These stories are a way for dead friends and family members to seem alive again. The stories reveal their character and many of their best moments alive. O’Brien utilizes storytelling to cope with the death that surrounds him, and to keep their memory burning on
Hidden somewhere within the blurred lines of fiction and reality, lies a great war story trapped in the mind of a veteran. On a day to day basis, most are not willing to murder someone, but in the Vietnam War, America’s youth population was forced to after being pulled in by the draft. Author Tim O’Brien expertly blends the lines between fiction, reality, and their effects on psychological viewpoints in the series of short stories embedded within his novel, The Things They Carried. He forces the reader to rethink the purpose of storytelling and breaks down not only what it means to be human, but how mortality and experience influence the way we see our world. In general, he attempts to question why we choose to tell the stories in the way
Why Is Telling A True War Story Hard Lots of stories are hard to comprehend because they’re more brutal and traumatic for listeners, even the story-teller. In three stories: “The Man I Killed”, “How To Tell A True War Story”, and “Speaking of Courage”, Tim O’Brien showed how changing certain parts of a story and making them graceful, can make them easier to comprehend. However sometimes telling the story the way it was makes it brutal and gruesome, though some listeners prefer that over gracefulness.
“The Dead” is the final story of the collection “Dubliners” written by James Joyce in 1914. To briefly summarize the story, Gabriel with his wife, Gretta, attended the annual dancing party hosted by his two aunts. However, at the party, Gabriel was confronted with embarrassing situations, such as a housemaid who was provoked by his personal comment and his dance partner who taunted him. At the end of the party, Gabriel found his wife who was enraptured by song and he got to know that his wife was thinking of her old lover who had died for her. Thus, he sadly looked at his wife and the story ended.
