Blog Post 2

Short Story: ¨The Lives of the Dead¨

Question: How does ¨The Lives of the Dead¨ and O'Brien's discussion of Linda serve as a suitable culmination of one or more of the themes explored in The Things They Carried?

In ¨The Lives of the Dead,¨ Obrien's wanting to sleep all the time so he can imagine Linda, his writing about her even forty-three years later, and his never ending thinking/talking concerning death all serve as a culmination of O'Brien's discussion of obsession. In this way, O'Brien reflects on the nature of how we refuse to let the things and people we love go to the point where obsession starts to occur. O'Brien also reflects in this way on the way humans can't, therefore never do, understand death. 

Obsession

In O'Brien's opinion, death is something that doesn't always have to stop the lives of the living. He plays on this idea through the title of the last chapter in his novel, using the name ¨The Lives of the Dead¨ to portray this idea in the most obvious way. O'Brien claims to of been in love with a girl named Linda and explains his loving emotions towards her even 43 years after her death. Was O'Brien really in love with Linda? The odds against it are very high because it is hard for a nine year old to grasp the concept of being in love. In a way, I believe O'Brien is more so in love with death. He is obsessed with the way it leaves you with no answers; he is obsessed with finding these answers but he cannot, so instead he romanticizes death through his memory of Linda and Ted Lavender and every other solider he witnessed die in the war. 



Just like in the picture shown, O'Brien seethes with obsession. He can not let go of the things he can no longer experience, such as people, and because of that he singes with regret and anger and sadness. He holds obsession tightly within his strength, never letting anyone take away his memory of Linda or the tragedy of all the deaths of solders he experienced even if these memories cause him pain. Maybe he does not necessarily want to hold onto these things, but instead does not realize he is unhealthily holding onto these things through his numerous stories, therefore he is unable to come to the realization that he wants to let these things go in the first place. O'Brien does not realize he is obsessed. O'Brien tells us, ¨The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping others might then dream along with you, and in this way memory and imagination and language combine to make spirits in the head.¨ (p. 218) This describes O'Brien's love for stories due to his obsession for making dead figures come back to life in his own head.

¨She was dead. I understood that. After all, I'd seen her body. And yet even as a nine-year-old I had begun to practice the magic of stories. Some I just dreamed up. Others I wrote down- the scenes and dialogue. And at nighttime I'd slide into sleep knowing that Linda would be there waiting for me.¨ (p. 231) This passage shows Tim O'Brien's obsession with keeping the dead alive in an extremely clear manner. He understands logically that Linda is dead and he can never see her again, but he loves her and he does not want to let go of her or accept his reality so instead he chooses to enjoy the magic of her remains by dreaming up scenarios her in the most vivid way possible. Nine year old O'Brien finds a certain safety in doing this; O'Brien found and continues to find a safe haven in his stories of those who had died but he had been close too. Through this, O'Brien finds himself immensely deep in obsession.

But does O'Brien actually realize he is obsessed?

Blog Post 1

Short story: How to Tell a True War Story
Question: According to Tim O'Brien, what is a "True War Story"? What is "Truth"? What is an example of truth in this story? Do you agree with his definitions? Why or why not?

A true true war story according Tim O'Brien is a story in which there is no obvious moral or point. After hearing a war story you should feel as if the person telling it should of went on and concluded in some way as if it is not finished yet, but it is finished. You are feeling this way because it is a true war story. Tim O'Brien tells us, "Often in a true war story there is not even a point, or else the point doesn't hit you until twenty years later, in your sleep, and you wake up and shake your wife and start telling the story to her, expect when you've gotten to the end you've forgotten the point again." (pg. 78). Just as O'Brien exuded a definite unsureness of the point inside of truth in this passage, he does so relating to a way way in which he tries to understand what the point of life is as a whole. Tim O'Brien is able to meticulously acknowledge when truth exists but he consistently fails to find the point that lays inside of it.

The definition of truth is "something that is true" and the definition of true is "in accordance with fact or reality." In the definition of the truth we have just received a great clue unto why Tim O'Brien believes that no true war story has any real point. Telling the truth means telling something that actually happened but O'Brien does not like what reality is made up of due to the events that have occurred in his life, so he fails to find the point in reality because he feels depressed towards the subject. He was drafted into war unwillingly and it made him so sick to his stomach that he ran away from it all- literally- and then had to face the disgusting truth of his life when reality hit him. What was the point of selling his soul to a war he didn't even want to be apart of? There was no point in his mind, and that was a true story. There is no point.

One example of truth O'Brien offers us in this passage is the story of Curt Lemon and how he was killed. "This one wakes me up. In the mountains that day, I watched Lemon turn side-ways. He laughed and said something to Rat Kiley. Then he took a peculiar half step, moving from shade into bright sunlight, and the booby-trapped 105 round blew him into a tree." (pg. 79). That is how O'Brien ends this "true war story." As a reader you are left grasping for more, looking for some type of moral, some point, and you can't find it. According to O'Brien, this must mean that this story is a piece of nothing other than truth.

Although I believe the story of Curt Lemon dying is true because there is nothing spectacularly amazing detail wise to it therefore giving it no point to be told other than the point that it actually did happen, I do not believe that all true stories have no point. Most true war stories are most likely difficult to get the point out of because war stories are told from just one person's point of view. A painting is better understood when you look at everything from far away, rather than just one piece up close.

Tim O'Brien does.