Death Is One of My Biggest Fears

…that being said, I was a little bit uncomfortable with the way that it was presented in this novel. The characters make death seem like it isn’t a big deal, which I sort of understand because the concept of it consumes their lives while they’re away at war and afterwards. I guess I just couldn’t imagine ever treating a dead body the way that they did- shaking hands, speaking for it, treating it with an “illusion of aliveness” (218). However, I did really like how his (almost) infatuation with death made sense with the story at the end about Linda. This is a stupid reference, but it kind of reminded me of The Fault In Our Stars, because they were young, in love, one of them dies and the other manages to keep them alive in some way. Even though the story about Linda and the rest of the book about the war don’t seem to connect, the way the author Tim O’Brien remembers them is the same in the sense that he makes details up about both stories in order to make sense out of them. The author says that “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” (218).  This is how he relates the story of Vietnam to the reader, and how he keeps Linda alive in his mind. I’m glad that the bit about Linda at the end was included because it seemed to tie everything together is actually what made me like this novel.