White Lies?

     The last few sentences of The Things They Carried particularly caught my eye. Not only are they masterfully put together, they leave us with a significant amount of insight into O'Brien's current state. The passage transitions from a memory of Linda to a metaphor to a dark realization.

     Much of our discussion in class was centered around O'Brien and his presentation of stories in the book. In class, we question whether it matters that these are stories or are the ideas and emotions that we get from them enough. In my attempts to mentally label everything as truths, Truths, or lies (I acknowledge that these categories are very loosely placed together and change with the perspectives of different people), I wasn't sure with what to do with the stories. I put them in the category of truths, because they held such an important place in O'Brien's mind. In the last sentence though, he says “I realize it is as Tim trying to save Timmy's life with a story,” revealing the blinding effect of stories. As we began to question in Cat's Cradle though, are these lies we tell ourselves necessarily bad? Tim finds himself in distress in the present and seems to find some happiness in the image of Linda. As we've found, the stories are helpful to those who find a need to live in them.