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How Does O Brien Tell The Lives Of The Dead

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O’Brien culminates The Things They Carried with “The Lives of the Dead,” which includes a story about a girl named Linda that is at first seemingly unrelated to the overall plot. O’Brien discusses the story of Linda, a girl who he fell in love with in elementary school who succumbed to cancer. He had a deep connection with her, and found himself relishing sleep so he could dream endlessly about Linda. O’Brien then connects this story to those revolving the occurrences of Vietnam. He reveals yet another purpose of telling war stories: not to simply show readers what war in Vietnam was like, but to “revive…that which is absolute and unchanging” (O’Brien 224). Telling war stories serves as a way of “making the dead seem not quite so dead” (O’Brien

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