Remembrance Through Dreams

I absolutely loved how Tim O’ Brien ended The Things They Carried. While reading the book, although I thoroughly enjoyed it, I wondered why and how he was able to make up stories about death. Then, it all came together at the end of the book. Out of nowhere, he brought up Linda: a girl he loved when he was just nine years old. After dying from a brain tumor, he would bring her back to life through his dreams, remembering the small details about her that he unconditionally loves: “…in a story I can steal her soul. I can revive, at least briefly, that which is absolute and unchanging” (224). This short story within his novel connected beautifully to why he wrote this novel. The way he wrote about the deaths in the war so that the readers could understand what it felt like, even though they were not true, was similar to how he coped as a child. He dreamt of Linda so that he could feel again. He dreamt of her so that he got the same jittery feeling he experienced walking her up to her doorstep. By creating war stories about death, Tim O’ Brien was able to recreate feelings that otherwise could not be understood.