Death leaves a lasting impact on people all over the world. Death changes the way we value life and the death of a loved one affects the way we prevail as a person. In the novel, The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien the death of the narrator’s childhood sweetheart Linda leaves a lasting impact on his state of mind during the war; meanwhile the narrator struggles with the aspect of death and the ability to make light of it which stems from the death of Linda. Linda’s death illuminates the fact that through storytelling the dead have the ability to come back to life and help us cope with the fact that they have passed. Through the death of Linda, the narrator’s personality is forever changed. After her death he finds it hard to confront dead bodies; this is especially shown after he kills a
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He also views his own storytelling as having restorative and regenerative effects for the people that died (Werlock). The narrator’s ability to thoroughly describe the deceased’s life after their death contributes a lot of depth to the story and contributes massively to the book’s ability to tell an accurate war story. For example after the narrator killed the vietnamese soldier he begins to imagine what his life could have possibly been before the pointless war, how he could have had a wife and a promising life in mathematics “, the man I killed would have been determined to continue his education in mathematics...he fell in love with a classmate, a girl of seventeen… One evening, perhaps, they exchanged gold rings.” (122). This adds to the fact that throughout the war many promising contributors to the world died fighting a war that many believed did not have a lot of purpose and how soldiers on both sides did not want to fight this war. O’Brien’s storytelling reveals the reality of war and the sad reality about the soldiers that fought in
He also views his own storytelling as having restorative and regenerative effects for the people that died (Werlock). The narrator’s ability to thoroughly describe the deceased’s life after their death contributes a lot of depth to the story and contributes massively to the book’s ability to tell an accurate war story. For example after the narrator killed the vietnamese soldier he begins to imagine what his life could have possibly been before the pointless war, how he could have had a wife and a promising life in mathematics “, the man I killed would have been determined to continue his education in mathematics...he fell in love with a classmate, a girl of seventeen… One evening, perhaps, they exchanged gold rings.” (122). This adds to the fact that throughout the war many promising contributors to the world died fighting a war that many believed did not have a lot of purpose and how soldiers on both sides did not want to fight this war. O’Brien’s storytelling reveals the reality of war and the sad reality about the soldiers that fought in