Reclaiming the Ability to Feel

While Tim O’Brien, the author, uses the novel to explore the art of storytelling and manipulation of the reader, Tim O’Brien the narrator and solider uses the collection of stories in a much different way. The character of Tim O’Brien, as he is created in the novel, uses the stories to bring feeling back into his life, to reclaim his pre-Vietnam self. Tim states that telling such stories enabled him “to make myself feel again” (172). As we know, war is difficult, it is brutal and damaging both mentally and physically. The soldiers become numb to the pain, and lose feeling altogether in order to save themselves from pain. O’Brien must tell stories to bring himself back to all the emotions that were damaged in war. The characters who die in his stories, including Ted, Kiowa, and Linda, all represent a lost sense in Tim and their presence serves as a way to reclaim these emotions. Ted represents the feeling of fear while Kiowa represents the deep faith in religion, both of which Tim loses somewhere in the war. Although not from his time in the war, Tim uses Linda to help explain the concept of death while also bringing up the importance of his innocence. Tim’s ability to “save Timmy’s life through a story” is contrary to Baulkner, who fails to make himself feel again. After he returns from Vietnam, he is lost, on the outside, and never able to restore himself. His suicide exhibits his complete numbness to life.  Without the tool of storytelling, Baulkner can only travel around in circles instead of finding the path back to the dynamic expression of feeling that constitutes fully living.