Note: this was an in-class journal that I just typed up, so if there are typos it's because I typed it quickly, and the sentence fragments are a result of the in-class setting. :-)

Julia Schwartz

"The Lives of the Dead"

            Throughout The Things They Carried, author Tim O’Brien struggles with his memories of war and is tormented as he tries to fit the pieces of his puzzle together to find a meaning for the war. In “The Lives of the Dead,” O’Brien examines a memory that, while it is not actually part of the war, serves as an explanation of Tim’s role in it, idealized by nine-year-old Linda’s battle with brain cancer.

            In “The Lives of the Dead,” O’Brien reveals a part of the essence of his stores and bares his soul the reader even more than he has in previous stories:

                                    The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that others

                            might then dream it along with you, and in this way memory and imagination and    

                            language combine to make spirits in the head. (230)

                    O’Brien tells his reader here why he has written The Things They Carried---to share and bring back to life through memories, where he “can see Kiowa, too, and Ted Lavender and Curt Lemon” (245) in the context of Timmy and Linda. Just as Tim carries the memories of Linda with him, so too does he carry the men of his battalion in Vietnam. In telling his story, O’Brien shares the men who were lost, takes down the old book from the dusty shelf, and proceeds to read it.

            As O’Brien shows how Linda maintains her presence in his memory, he can prove to himself that Kiowa and the others can live on as well, for “once you’re alive…you can’t ever be dead” (244). Because Tim still carries the images of his friends with him, they remain living in spirit. O’Brien tells his stories because “In a story, [he] can steal [Linda’s] soul” (236) and the souls of all others lost to him and bring them back to him as comfort.

            Linda is portrayed with all the gentle innocence of a sweet nine-year-old girl, and her lack of exposure to the struggles of teenage and adult life leave her with a pure view of the world. Linda is like Tim’s guardian angel, the white tassel on her red hat is proof of this. Linda is embodied strength, bravery, and wisdom, and although she is no longer living a mortal life, she has moved on. In her new identity, the very best Tim can remember of her, she is free from ugliness and can remain a beautiful companion for Tim, and can help him through all his hard times, to tell him, “’Timmy, stop crying… it doesn’t matter’” (238). In his mind, “in the spell of memory and imagination” (245), Linda is there to bring Tim back to peace.

            Linda to Tim is a symbol of strength; she braved the torture of her cancer “the whole time [staring] straight ahead, her eyes locked on the blackboard, her hands loosely folded at her lap” (235). While she knew her life was being lost, she didn’t dwell on self-pity and melancholy. Instead, Linda fought nobly and when she was defeated, accepted her fate and moved on. It is as if Tim wishes he could have acted in his war the same was Linda acted in hers: if he could have accepted his draft and not tried to run away from it, faced it like a man; if he had accepted his predicament steadily, mourned, and gone back to life, instead of dwelling on the minor factors, because “it doesn’t matter” (238).

            Linda is a spirit to Tim, a memory of what was, a lasting bearer of meaning. O’Brien realizes “she’s mostly made up, with a new identity and a new name, like the man who never was” (245), just like all of Tim’s past, just like all of The Things They Carried. Yet Tim can reach back to her, and all the real men who never really were, to capture the highlights of their truncated lives and to move beyond their deaths as mortals into their lives as immortal guardians and guides for Tim left behind in the tangible world.