In The Things They Carried, Linda is a beautiful
character. She represents struggle
and difference, but she also represents hope, courage, and healing. She battles her illness with grace and
a stoic demeanor. Even when Nick
Veenhof ripped the cap off her head, revealing her secret baldness and thus the
secret about her illness, she handles it as best she can. That moment was one of the most gut-wrenching
in the whole novel. The secret she
tried to hide from her classmates and potentially herself, as she wanted to
keep living a normal life, is rudely thrust into the open. Linda feels as exposed as her
translucent scalp. Tim O’Brien
(the author not character) wanted his readers to believe in the story unfolding,
even though it was a fiction. I
think this moment for me was the most believable, and I still have trouble
believing it never happened.
Though the truth is, it did happen, just with people all over the world
not necessarily named Linda. That
is why this passage is so painful—because the feelings it portrays are so
present in readers’ lives. And ultimately, that is why O’Brien’s
book is so wonderful; it makes even the moments that may have never happened to
the reader relatable, especially in terms of the emotions portrayed. The Things They Carried is a
fiction, but the emotions it elicits are real and true.
I would fully agree with you that this is an extremely painful passage. It is very difficult to believe that this is not nonfiction, but it does not matter because these feelings and similar stories happen all the time. People have secrets that they try to hide and they can be so rudely exposed to the world in the most hurtful of ways. The power of storytelling in this novel makes the reader feel this pain that Linda feels and relate to her simply because of the way the story is told.
ReplyDeleteThe other seriously painful passage in this novel is the baby water buffalo scene, and while most people cannot relate by saying they shot a buffalo, many can feel those awful emotions of losing a friend. Some of these stories make you think about how others may have felt in the war, while other stories, and the same "war stories," evoke true emotions in the reader, even if the actions do not relate to personal experience.