The Things They Carried Analysis Essay

Life is full of surprises. There are many twists and turns that can alter a person’s views on life or help them grow as people. Within the novel The Things They Carried, there were a lot of instances where Tim O’Brien and the rest of his team were affected by what they saw in Vietnam. However, Tim had prior knowledge to death because of a girl he loved as a child who died. The death of the girl, Linda, showed him early in life that stories can make the dead live. Storytelling is a huge part of O’Brien’s life, and Linda brought that out in him in a way that he was able to figure out how to tell stories of his time in Vietnam.

Linda is a very important aspect of O’Brien’s development as a person. She signifies that a part of the past can live on through stories and imagination. After she died, O’Brien said that he “made up elaborate stories to bring Linda alive in my sleep” (O’Brien, 243). In his dreams, he could see Linda alive. Linda was both his first love and first experience with death. He dealt with the sadness of her death through imagination and daydreaming of her. This imagination transfers into storytelling when he goes into Vietnam. Vietnam is a traumatic experience and, for many others, resulted in problems later in life. For example, Norman Bowker had a lot of problems after leaving the war and eventually hung himself. O’Brien didn’t have much of a problem adapting to life without war, but Norman Bowker couldn’t ever quite find an outlet for his feelings. Although O’Brien says writing wasn’t meant to be therapeutic, he does think that “the act of writing led me through a swirl of memories that otherwise might have ended in paralysis or worse. By telling stories, you objectify your own experience” (158). Telling stories is a way for O’Brien to discuss his pain and grief from all of the death he both caused and witnessed. Linda helped him start to cope with death through storytelling at a young age and in a way that immensely helped him after the war....