The Things They Carried - Unexpected Outcome of the Story - Essay Example

Why the author chose such an ending to "The things they carried"Tim O'Brien’s final statement in the “The things they carried”, apparently, has little relevance to the Vietnam situation. However, it is enormously relevant in addressing the intimate affiliation that exists between life and death, a factor that motivated the author to use “The Lives of the Dead” to explicate the intimate association. Tim uses this end to demonstrate that the purpose of his war narrative was more than merely showing readers the devastating effects of war.

Smaller stories relating to deaths in Vietnam are interspersed throughout the story. The war narrations lead back to the being of Tim, a man whose writing strives to make sense of life through exploration and in connection to the death of others. His first love, Linda, makes him realize that indeed, death can be overcome by fiction. Through Linda, Tim’s innocence is wiped-out as he experiences love and death synonymously knowing very well that unlike Kiowa, Curt Lemon, and Ted Lavender, Linda was innocent.

She had done nothing that deserved the humiliation she was subjected to, but the inescapability and omnipresence of death brings a hardly negotiable feeling of sadness to Tim. Hence, his choice of the end was motivated by the ostensible fact that other soldiers kept silent in regard to the deaths experienced, and Tim saw the need to keep them alive and remember their qualities through narrations of how they were when alive. Tim confesses that although he is 43, he is still keeping Linda alive through stories.

This indicates that these stories kept him blossoming and alive as well. The end makes the story more of a life story by portraying Tim’s worldview as one of keeping the deceased alive by recalling them, accepting the loss brought about by death and build peace that steers the generation forward.