The Things They Carried, By Tim O Brien: An Analysis
Stories allow people to re-experience events. The ability to tell stories is a valued skill that has been being practiced as far back as history dates. Everyone one is unique, and brings up different feelings and emotions to different people. In The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, O’Brien lives upon narrative tales. Ever since the death of his childhood love, Linda, O’Brien uniquely uses the magic of storytelling in almost every facet of his life. Tim O’Brien ends his book about the Vietnam War with an anecdote about Linda in order to show how his relationship to the dead. Linda helped him emotionally experience and survive Vietnam. Linda is O’Brien’s Anchor, everything he goes through he relates it back to Linda whether it is subconsciously or consciously.
At a young age, Tim O’Brien is inspired by Linda’s death to tell stories, these stories are what allow him to mentally Survive Vietnam, a task not all soldiers are capable of. Recounting on resulting behavior of Linda’s death when he was nine, Tim O’Brien remembers what Timmy did after the young girl’s death: “Lying in bed at night I made up elaborate stories to bring Linda alive...as a nine year …show more content…
old i had begun to practice the magic of stories” (230-231). As a young boy Timmy is shook by the death of his true love. Apposed to the traditional form of mourning, O’Brien instantly finds a talent that subsides his weary feelings. By remembering and making up stories about Linda, the 9 year old boy manages to keep in touch with Linda and avoid the emotional baggage that comes with the death. Much later in his life, Tim O’Brien uses the same strategy to cope with a series of emotionally piercing events during the Vietnam War. By telling stories O’Brien finds a medium to tie his emotions to, by he is able to live his life free of the shackles of trauma. This Medium is created through Linda and Timmy’s post mortem relationship to her. Linda essentially taught young and old O’Brien to tell stories. The subconscious lesson he learns enables Tim O’Brien to outlive and outlast the nightmare that was the War; telling stories allow him to live happy life as opposed to other Vietnam War soldiers. One of these soldiers who could not bare the psychological effects of combat is Norman Bowker. The mentally unstable soldier takes his own life, convinced “Nam” killed him. After receiving news about Bowker’s suicide, the reasoning being he felt he had no purpose in life, O’Brien reflect on why his transition was so easy: “I received Norman Bowker’s letter, it occurred to me that the act of writing had led me through a swirl of memories that might otherwise have ended in paralysis or worse. By telling stories you objectify your own experience. You separate it from yourself. You pin down certain truth” (151). Following the war O’Brien grieves his friends, the cause of death being the emotional baggage Bowker carried after the war. O’Brien reflects on his own mental stability and realizes that he is virtually fine. Instantly he attributes his health stories, these stories allow him to separate his emotion, which very well may have been similar to Bowker’s fatal feelings, from himself and his own everyday life. Setting himself and his haunting incidents allows O’Brien to avoid the traumatizing sentiments tied to despair and ghastful occurrence. Even if he does not realize it, Linda gifted Tim the ability be mentally and physically alive during and after America’s longest war. By learning to tell stories in the face of tragedy, O’Brien is able to be one of the few to reduce the agonizing burden The Vietnam War. He is able to do this thanks to his Bond with his deceased friend as a young boy.
Timmy’s divergent picture of Linda in her casket becomes the way he deals with death the rest of his life. Leaning over Linda’s deceased body, O’Brien can not come to terms with the death. His mind instantly insinuates that the body in the white casket is not that of his one love: “It didn’t seem real. A mistake I thought. The girl lying in the white casket wasn’t Linda” (228). Linda is Timmy’s first confrontation with death, her dead body is the first of many he will see. Timmy’s minds instantly neglects that Linda death is tangible. For the rest of his life O’Brien will not see deaths as what they are, he magnifies the circumstances surrounding the death of an individual in order to reject the violent, innocence shredding event that killed someone. He views death as somethings else, O’Brien does not allow his mind to make these deaths real. Linda is not the only person close to O’Brien whose death he will manipulate. In the case of Curt Lemon, O’Brien’s friend, he refuses to seriously acknowledge that Lemon was killed by a landmine. O’Brien reflects on the death of his comrade: “There was a noise, I suppose, which must’ve been the detonator...His face was suddenly brown and shining...it was almost beautiful, the way the sunlight came around him and lifted him up and sucked him high into a tree full of moss and vines and white blossoms” (67). Deaths are not realized as beautiful. However, the death O’Brien sees is different from the happening, he sees a man being killed by sunlight, not a deadly weapon. Envisioning dissimilar pictures corresponding to a death is how O’Brien copes with fatality. His first experience with this method coming at the sight of Linda’s corpse. Back then, when he was 9, it was a natural reaction, now it is still a natural reaction but he does this because of his similar experience with Linda. O’Brien repeats this process through the war. After the death Kiowa O’Brien does not view deaths as the brutalities they are, he sees them as sees them as something different in attempts to further the connection of a close friend or loved to the loss of their life. He first does this with his 9 year old sweetheart, Linda, but O’Brien later utilizes this tactic to his friends in the War.
Linda’s death directly influences the way Tim O’Brien sees the dead, he must give them all an identity. In his dreams, when Timmy brings Linda to life, she changes his outlook on death: ‘“She’d say amazing things sometimes. ‘Once you’re alive,’ she’d say, ‘you can’t ever be dead.’ Or she’d say: ‘Do I look dead?”’ (231). Death is not easy for any person to handle. O’Brien envisioned Linda asking if she looks dead, or saying that death is real, in reality O’Brien made these lines up himself and embodied them in Linda. In Linda he sees a story, a happy spirit, and someone who believes they are still living even though they are not alive; rather than just seeing a dead body. By seeing the dead as a person and not an object O’Brien feels better about the situation. O’Brien sees many lifeless bodies in Vietnam and knows how to handle death from his prior experience with Linda. After confessing to lying about killing a man, O’Brien backs himself up, giving a reason to his dishonest: “There were many bodies, real bodies with real faces, but I was young then and I was afraid to look. And now, twenty years later, I'm left with faceless responsibility and faceless grief...What stories can do, I guess, is make things present. I can look at things I never looked at. I can attach faces to grief and love and pity and God. I can be brave” (172). By attaching a face to a body O’Brien can then create stories to bring that person alive like he did with Linda. However he cannot do this to a random dead person, there is no story to tell. If there is no story to tell O’Brien is left with grief and guilt, stories are his coping mechanism. Even if he makes up his own, possibly inaccurate stories, about the deceased O’Brien can vanish the unsettling anguish and not be left with years of distress. His stories don’t just bring departed to life, they help himself. When Linda died he instantly re-personified her. He had memories to turn into stories which kept him from grieving. With the dead bodies in Vietnam O’Brien did the same thing, however, he did not have memories so he made up stories about the bodies; thus having the same effect. O’Brien treats the death of people in Vietnam almost identically (but on a smaller scale) to the way he treated Linda’s death.
Ending the novel with a tale about Linda portrays that O’Brien survival of the Vietnam War can largely be attributed to the young.
Her unfortunate death influences O’Brien to learn the skill of storytelling, which is now crucial to him. All his experiences during the war can be traced back to Linda, she leads him through the shit fields of Vietnam. Although at a brief glance it seems The Things They Carried is about the war, the main theme is really stories. It is these personal versions of countless occurrences that allow one to reach a more profound level of emotion. O’Brien portrays this with war as the medium for insinuating the effects of stories. Stories allow for someone to channel their emotions to a different path when necessary and reach the ultimate peace of mind, a place that is unattainable for
many.
At a young age, Tim O’Brien is inspired by Linda’s death to tell stories, these stories are what allow him to mentally Survive Vietnam, a task not all soldiers are capable of. Recounting on resulting behavior of Linda’s death when he was nine, Tim O’Brien remembers what Timmy did after the young girl’s death: “Lying in bed at night I made up elaborate stories to bring Linda alive...as a nine year …show more content…
old i had begun to practice the magic of stories” (230-231). As a young boy Timmy is shook by the death of his true love. Apposed to the traditional form of mourning, O’Brien instantly finds a talent that subsides his weary feelings. By remembering and making up stories about Linda, the 9 year old boy manages to keep in touch with Linda and avoid the emotional baggage that comes with the death. Much later in his life, Tim O’Brien uses the same strategy to cope with a series of emotionally piercing events during the Vietnam War. By telling stories O’Brien finds a medium to tie his emotions to, by he is able to live his life free of the shackles of trauma. This Medium is created through Linda and Timmy’s post mortem relationship to her. Linda essentially taught young and old O’Brien to tell stories. The subconscious lesson he learns enables Tim O’Brien to outlive and outlast the nightmare that was the War; telling stories allow him to live happy life as opposed to other Vietnam War soldiers. One of these soldiers who could not bare the psychological effects of combat is Norman Bowker. The mentally unstable soldier takes his own life, convinced “Nam” killed him. After receiving news about Bowker’s suicide, the reasoning being he felt he had no purpose in life, O’Brien reflect on why his transition was so easy: “I received Norman Bowker’s letter, it occurred to me that the act of writing had led me through a swirl of memories that might otherwise have ended in paralysis or worse. By telling stories you objectify your own experience. You separate it from yourself. You pin down certain truth” (151). Following the war O’Brien grieves his friends, the cause of death being the emotional baggage Bowker carried after the war. O’Brien reflects on his own mental stability and realizes that he is virtually fine. Instantly he attributes his health stories, these stories allow him to separate his emotion, which very well may have been similar to Bowker’s fatal feelings, from himself and his own everyday life. Setting himself and his haunting incidents allows O’Brien to avoid the traumatizing sentiments tied to despair and ghastful occurrence. Even if he does not realize it, Linda gifted Tim the ability be mentally and physically alive during and after America’s longest war. By learning to tell stories in the face of tragedy, O’Brien is able to be one of the few to reduce the agonizing burden The Vietnam War. He is able to do this thanks to his Bond with his deceased friend as a young boy.
Timmy’s divergent picture of Linda in her casket becomes the way he deals with death the rest of his life. Leaning over Linda’s deceased body, O’Brien can not come to terms with the death. His mind instantly insinuates that the body in the white casket is not that of his one love: “It didn’t seem real. A mistake I thought. The girl lying in the white casket wasn’t Linda” (228). Linda is Timmy’s first confrontation with death, her dead body is the first of many he will see. Timmy’s minds instantly neglects that Linda death is tangible. For the rest of his life O’Brien will not see deaths as what they are, he magnifies the circumstances surrounding the death of an individual in order to reject the violent, innocence shredding event that killed someone. He views death as somethings else, O’Brien does not allow his mind to make these deaths real. Linda is not the only person close to O’Brien whose death he will manipulate. In the case of Curt Lemon, O’Brien’s friend, he refuses to seriously acknowledge that Lemon was killed by a landmine. O’Brien reflects on the death of his comrade: “There was a noise, I suppose, which must’ve been the detonator...His face was suddenly brown and shining...it was almost beautiful, the way the sunlight came around him and lifted him up and sucked him high into a tree full of moss and vines and white blossoms” (67). Deaths are not realized as beautiful. However, the death O’Brien sees is different from the happening, he sees a man being killed by sunlight, not a deadly weapon. Envisioning dissimilar pictures corresponding to a death is how O’Brien copes with fatality. His first experience with this method coming at the sight of Linda’s corpse. Back then, when he was 9, it was a natural reaction, now it is still a natural reaction but he does this because of his similar experience with Linda. O’Brien repeats this process through the war. After the death Kiowa O’Brien does not view deaths as the brutalities they are, he sees them as sees them as something different in attempts to further the connection of a close friend or loved to the loss of their life. He first does this with his 9 year old sweetheart, Linda, but O’Brien later utilizes this tactic to his friends in the War.
Linda’s death directly influences the way Tim O’Brien sees the dead, he must give them all an identity. In his dreams, when Timmy brings Linda to life, she changes his outlook on death: ‘“She’d say amazing things sometimes. ‘Once you’re alive,’ she’d say, ‘you can’t ever be dead.’ Or she’d say: ‘Do I look dead?”’ (231). Death is not easy for any person to handle. O’Brien envisioned Linda asking if she looks dead, or saying that death is real, in reality O’Brien made these lines up himself and embodied them in Linda. In Linda he sees a story, a happy spirit, and someone who believes they are still living even though they are not alive; rather than just seeing a dead body. By seeing the dead as a person and not an object O’Brien feels better about the situation. O’Brien sees many lifeless bodies in Vietnam and knows how to handle death from his prior experience with Linda. After confessing to lying about killing a man, O’Brien backs himself up, giving a reason to his dishonest: “There were many bodies, real bodies with real faces, but I was young then and I was afraid to look. And now, twenty years later, I'm left with faceless responsibility and faceless grief...What stories can do, I guess, is make things present. I can look at things I never looked at. I can attach faces to grief and love and pity and God. I can be brave” (172). By attaching a face to a body O’Brien can then create stories to bring that person alive like he did with Linda. However he cannot do this to a random dead person, there is no story to tell. If there is no story to tell O’Brien is left with grief and guilt, stories are his coping mechanism. Even if he makes up his own, possibly inaccurate stories, about the deceased O’Brien can vanish the unsettling anguish and not be left with years of distress. His stories don’t just bring departed to life, they help himself. When Linda died he instantly re-personified her. He had memories to turn into stories which kept him from grieving. With the dead bodies in Vietnam O’Brien did the same thing, however, he did not have memories so he made up stories about the bodies; thus having the same effect. O’Brien treats the death of people in Vietnam almost identically (but on a smaller scale) to the way he treated Linda’s death.
Ending the novel with a tale about Linda portrays that O’Brien survival of the Vietnam War can largely be attributed to the young.
Her unfortunate death influences O’Brien to learn the skill of storytelling, which is now crucial to him. All his experiences during the war can be traced back to Linda, she leads him through the shit fields of Vietnam. Although at a brief glance it seems The Things They Carried is about the war, the main theme is really stories. It is these personal versions of countless occurrences that allow one to reach a more profound level of emotion. O’Brien portrays this with war as the medium for insinuating the effects of stories. Stories allow for someone to channel their emotions to a different path when necessary and reach the ultimate peace of mind, a place that is unattainable for
many.