Dreaming Saves Lives

In the chapter The Lives of the Dead in the novel The Things They Carried, O'Brien discusses dreams.  He begins the chapter by saying that he still dreams Linda, Ted Lavender, Kiowa, Curt Lemon, the man he killed, the old man, and the other bodies alive.  O'Brien then says, "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).  Later in the chapter, he continues discussing dreams by saying, "The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that others might then dream along with you, and in this way memory and imagination and language combine to make spirits in the head.  There is the illusion of aliveness," (218).  O'Brien strongly states that retelling a story makes you dream and in order for others to understand the story, they must dream it too and use their imaginations.  By dreaming these stories, these "spirits" are created in one's imagination and make the dead seem alive again.  Retelling these stories makes his dreams come alive and he opens the chapter by stating, "But this too is true: stories can save us," (213).  These stories, that are also dreams and memories, have saved O'Brien because he has been able to bring the dead back to life in his mind and convey his love for these people to others through his stories.  This ability to resurrect these people in his dreams is extremely powerful and while it has essentially saved his life, he shows the reader that it can save their lives too.