Chiasmeese! (the plural of chiasmus?)

The official definition of "chiasmus", according to Dictionary.com, is "a reversal in the order of words in two otherwise parallel phrases". In class it was simply defined as "a cross-over of meaning". Within the first two works we have read and discussed, we have observed numerous chiasmus (chaismeese?). The children's game, "Cat's Cradle" literally represents a chiasmus of intertwining string, which the book connects to numerous themes, such as truth and science vs. lies and religion. After noticing so much crossover of ideas in Cat's Cradle, I started to keep my eyes open while reading The Things They Carried. The last chapter, and O'Brien's allusion to Linda connects themes that have been apparent in the whole book, an apparent and obvious chiasmus being death and truth vs. life and lies. O’Brien states, “The thing about a story is that you dream is as you tell it, hoping that others might then dream along with you…. There is the illusion of aliveness” (218). As we witnessed with Lavender, war makes many soldiers reject reality. Lavender would take tranquilizers to suppress the emotional pain that war brought him. He could not deal with the truth and terror of war, so he chose to ignore it with drugs. At the end of the book, O’Brien relates his love for Linda to the stories he tells of war. He dreams of Linda at night and, even though he knows his dreams are false constructions of his desires, he still prefers to be asleep than awake. Even after 40 years, the memory of Linda haunts him when he is awake. The chiasmus of corresponding themes in this novel ties numerous important concepts together.