Near the end of The
Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien shifts the focus of the novel away from
war stories. “The Lives of The Dead” starts just like most other chapters, set
in a small village in Vietnam. The
author describes how he felt awkward and detached while the other members of
his platoon shook hands with a dead man, in a strange sort of ritual. He then
shifts the focus to the much younger “Timmy” with a lengthy flashback
recounting his first true love Linda.
In this
story the reader gets to explore the deepest emotions of O’Brien, similar to
when he was considering fleeing to Canada. He explains how he tells stories to
keep the dead “alive,” and how story telling is a cathartic procedure. With so
many anecdotes and stories from his time in Vietnam, O’Brien is preserving the
lives of these men who would otherwise be forgotten. He admits that by writing
stories, he is trying to “save Timmy’s life with a story” (233). To me, this
admission made the whole purpose of the novel evident. It made sense that he
went into such great detail about the man he killed, simply because he wanted
to preserve him and his legacy, creating another world in which the young man
went on to become a scholar of mathematics.
Nevertheless,
the back of the book clearly states fiction as its genre, and the author
himself simply said that he was simply writing fictional stories. This
information still confuses me. I think that O’Brien included these deeply
emotional segments in his book simply because they are tantalizing and thought
provoking, and encourage the reader to question him or herself.
I agree. By creating these detailed snippets of a detailed memory, the reader is given hope. I truly wanted to believe the stories Tim O'Brien told about Norman Bowker and his sad realization of meaninglessness. Instead of letting the readers cling to this hope of reality, or need for something tangible, O'Brien pulls the rug out from under us. He basically leaves us dangling with almost nothing to hold on to. By telling these emotional stories that move the reader, Tim O'Brien creates an emotional response that we hold on to, only to let us down. In a way his method of writing is a perfect example for reality being an illusion. The stories in The Things They Carried appear so real at one moment, and the next, they're complete lies.
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