Innocence and storytelling are the themes that catch my attention the most. This especially how Tim O’Brien plays with writing in making you believe something that appears to be real, but then he explains in detail that storytelling is a very powerful way to express our deepest memories of people that are no longer with us. Also he means that you can make someone believe something that sounds real, but in the end it’s just a story made up by a person’s creativity and his gift to write in such way that makes the reader believe every single word. In the story “The Lives Of The Dead” by Tim O’Brien, a Vietnam war veteran and a writer, O’Brien writes about the wonders of storytelling and how you can bring a dead friend back from the dead. In this
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“They’re all dead. But in a story, which is a kind of dreaming, the dead sometimes smile and sit up and return to the world” (255). O’Brien uses his imagination or fantasy to keep around those friends who died a senseless death in Vietnam and that is the artwork of storytelling that keep’s them in this world, which is like a tale. O’Brien also says that as a writer, he can bring his elementary school sweetheart, which died of a tumor on her brain. Yet, he could bring her back into his life by storytelling, “But in a story I can steal her soul. I can revive, at least briefly, that which is absolute and unchanging. It 's not the surface that matters, it 's the identity that lives inside. In a story, miracles can happen. Linda can smile and sit up. She can reach out, touch my wrist, and say 'Timmy, stop crying.”(265). In a way he tries to revive that moment and bring it back to his life at least, “briefly”, he can make a short fable of himself with Linda, and give meaning back to his life because after her death in “The Live of The Dead” he states that a part of him died, in a sense his innocence and he tries to recall this part with her by telling stories and bringing that innocence back, where …show more content…
O’Brien say’s, “In months after Ted Lavender died, there were many other bodies”(270), meaning that it’s not the first time he has met death and it is no longer a surprise; thus, it wont be the last either. Tim finds it nothing new because from a very young age, he had his soul stained by death. The reaper/death shows up in Vietnam as well were Tim sees he’s friends die in the process of the war, this is all related to the lost of innocence in the story and that’s why he turns to storytelling as a way to scape the world where death exist to a world were there is no past, nor future, there is only, “…Ted Lavender and curt Lemon, and sometimes I can even see Timmy skating with Linda under the yellow floodlights. I’m young and happy. I’ll never die”(273). O’Brien is trying to revive those innocent days, but he can only do so in stories, he tries to capture the moment by living in a dream world, were he can do what ever he wants and bring alive the dead ones back to life and be with them for as long as he wishes to be with them. He realized that these stories kept him safe and it also revive that inner childhood he lost when, he met
“They’re all dead. But in a story, which is a kind of dreaming, the dead sometimes smile and sit up and return to the world” (255). O’Brien uses his imagination or fantasy to keep around those friends who died a senseless death in Vietnam and that is the artwork of storytelling that keep’s them in this world, which is like a tale. O’Brien also says that as a writer, he can bring his elementary school sweetheart, which died of a tumor on her brain. Yet, he could bring her back into his life by storytelling, “But in a story I can steal her soul. I can revive, at least briefly, that which is absolute and unchanging. It 's not the surface that matters, it 's the identity that lives inside. In a story, miracles can happen. Linda can smile and sit up. She can reach out, touch my wrist, and say 'Timmy, stop crying.”(265). In a way he tries to revive that moment and bring it back to his life at least, “briefly”, he can make a short fable of himself with Linda, and give meaning back to his life because after her death in “The Live of The Dead” he states that a part of him died, in a sense his innocence and he tries to recall this part with her by telling stories and bringing that innocence back, where …show more content…
O’Brien say’s, “In months after Ted Lavender died, there were many other bodies”(270), meaning that it’s not the first time he has met death and it is no longer a surprise; thus, it wont be the last either. Tim finds it nothing new because from a very young age, he had his soul stained by death. The reaper/death shows up in Vietnam as well were Tim sees he’s friends die in the process of the war, this is all related to the lost of innocence in the story and that’s why he turns to storytelling as a way to scape the world where death exist to a world were there is no past, nor future, there is only, “…Ted Lavender and curt Lemon, and sometimes I can even see Timmy skating with Linda under the yellow floodlights. I’m young and happy. I’ll never die”(273). O’Brien is trying to revive those innocent days, but he can only do so in stories, he tries to capture the moment by living in a dream world, were he can do what ever he wants and bring alive the dead ones back to life and be with them for as long as he wishes to be with them. He realized that these stories kept him safe and it also revive that inner childhood he lost when, he met