Why I Want To Save Linda's Life By Tim O Brien

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“And as a writer now, I want to save Linda’s life. Not her body- her life” (O’brien, 236). This quote is said by Tim O’brien in the last chapter of The Things They Carried. His childhood love, Linda, died at the age of nine because of a brain tumor. O’brien states this quote when he is forty-three years old and looking back at all his old pictures from 1956. He wanted to save Linda’s life because now that he is older and a writer, he wants to bring back her soul through his stories. That’s why he says he doesn’t want to save her body, but her life because in stories he can revive her for a short amount of time. I think this quote is significant because it can relate back to basically the whole book and O'brien's stories about death. Throughout …show more content…

I think ending with the story of his nine year old friend dying sums up the larger idea that death can come at anytime, whether by a random bullet when you're twenty years of age or unexpected cancer at the age of …show more content…

When I think of soldiers, I see them all being identical in a way where they all have the same mindset about following orders and having the same beliefs about how they acted going into war. In the first chapter, O’Brien states how each man is uniquely different and how the things they carry defines them. Ted Lavender was scared, so he carried tranquilizers. Dave Jensen cared about hygiene, so he carried a toothbrush and floss. Lieutenant cross could only think about Martha, so he brought pictures and letters from her. Henry Dobbin carried extra rations of food because he was a big man (O’Brien, 2). When I think of soldiers over in a different country, they all have the same backpack and have a strict list of what they can and cannot bring. This gave me a new insight about how unalike they actually were in Vietnam and how they could basically bring whatever they felt they needed, even drugs. Some of O’Brien’s stories also gave me a new awareness of how different each man copes after they come home from the war. “Norman Bowker, who three years later hanged himself in the locker room YMCA in his hometown in central Iowa” (O’Brien, 155). This was one of the unfortunate ways one soldier dealt with coming home from the war. Also, Tim O’Brien used stories of his experiences to cope with his way of coming back home. I think it is significant that

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