https://padlet.com/ruoccop/discussion3 O'Brien ends his novel with this interchanging story of Vietnam and his young love. What do you think is the author's purpose? What's the connection he makes between stories and salvation? Please use quotes from the text to support your answers. en-us 2016-12-16 14:06:40 UTC 2026-01-25 16:24:20 UTC hello@padlet.com 620269 https://padlet.com/ruoccop/discussion3/wish/144057125 O'Brien ending the novel the way he did to help us better understand that stories save you when you're at your all time low. "They're all dead. But in a story, which is a kind of dreaming, the dead sometimes smile and sit up and return tot he world" (Page 225). He's saying that although they are dead , his imagination and dreaming will help him better cope with that. "But this is true: stories can save us" (page 225). He makes a connection between salvation and stories  that stories can save you in a rough situation. O'Brien did this because he wants people to know that even if the war is over, or people returned home the stuff that they went through while at war they will carry that with them forever. "... and even still, right here, I keep dreaming Linda alive" (page 225).  He knows these things happened many years ago, but he still dwells on the past, he can never get over things that happened to him in war.

]]> 2016-12-16 14:37:37 UTC https://padlet.com/ruoccop/discussion3/wish/144057125 620223 https://padlet.com/ruoccop/discussion3/wish/144057840 I think the point of O'Brien ending the novel with this story is that it is a perfect example of how there are things you carry with you your entire life. That even forty years later the stories of Linda is what got Timmy through his days in Vietnam.  "And yet right here in the spell of memory and imagination, I can still see her as if through ice, as if i'm gazing into some other world, a place where there are no brain tumors and no funeral homes, where there are no bodies at all." (245) O'Brien connects stories to salvation by showing how the soldiers needed these stories to stay sane, sound of mind, and alive. Without stories the soldiers would be forced to face a reality of the brutal war around them.]]> 2016-12-16 14:39:30 UTC https://padlet.com/ruoccop/discussion3/wish/144057840 620057 https://padlet.com/ruoccop/discussion3/wish/144058101 Since it is the end of the book, the end of the war, and many deaths have happened, Tim O'Brien is explaining how stories can save us. In real life, a person might die who doesn't deserve to. But in a story, everyone can stay alive. It relates back to the idea of what's true and what's false in a war story. Telling stories where someone who is dead in real life is alive has helped Tim O'Brien survive war. He has images of someone who is dead still being there. "The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that others might then dream along with you, and in this way memory and imagination and language combine to make spirits in the head. There is the illusion of aliveness"(p.230). I think O'Brien's purpose of relating Linda to the war was to show the examples of how when someone important in his life has passed away, they are actually still there. He will always remember them. This last story could be to acknowledge the people who have died in O'Brien's life, and to show that they aren't gone forever. Salvation is being saved, so i think O'Brien is saying that in a way, stories are salvation. Stories can make a person come alive again, and save them, even if they are dead. "Lying in bed at night, I made up elaborate stories to bring Linda alive in my sleep"(p.243). Tim O'Brien creates stories to keep people who have died out of harm, so that he doesn't lose the person completely. ]]> 2016-12-16 14:40:15 UTC https://padlet.com/ruoccop/discussion3/wish/144058101 https://padlet.com/ruoccop/discussion3/wish/144058171 I think Tim O'Brien is saying that stories are what helped him keep alive and fight on through the war. His purpose of telling his story about Linda was to show the readers that he kept his love with him in his heart all through these years and it has helped him deal with death to this day. "Lying in bed at night, I made up elaborate stories to bring Linda alive in my sleep. I invented my own dreams" (243). This explains the importance that O'Brien saw between stories and salvation; even during the war, many years after the death of his true love, he would still think of her and bring her to life, showing that she never left him and it was Linda's story that kept him going in the war. "I'm forty-three years old, and a writer now, still dreaming Linda alive in exactly the same way" (245). He brought that idea of stories and salvation to when he would have to deal with the corpses in the war, such as Mitchell Sanders, but also when his fellow veterans would reminisce about Curt Lemon and what kind of man he was, bringing up a prominent story of him trick-or-treating naked which helped them cope with his death and realize that this part of him was still alive with them "we kept the dead alive with stories" (239). ]]> 2016-12-16 14:40:31 UTC https://padlet.com/ruoccop/discussion3/wish/144058171 https://padlet.com/ruoccop/discussion3/wish/144058539 Tim O'Brien makes connections between his stories and his Salvation because when he talks about the deaths of his friends and loved ones, he believes that they aren't really gone, that they're a pile of bodies being transformed into waste, according to O'Brien on page 238. "We kept the dead alive with stories" pg. 239. Think O'Brien's purpose in writing this chapter was to show others how he deals with the Loss of his friends and loved ones. Many people deal with death different ways but he thinks that if he believes that they're still alive, then he can be able to manage and go on with his life while he's in the situation he's in. ]]> 2016-12-16 14:41:41 UTC https://padlet.com/ruoccop/discussion3/wish/144058539 619850 https://padlet.com/ruoccop/discussion3/wish/144058573 I think Tim O'Brien purpose for referencing Linda is to show how vets try to cope with death. It's just another way. In the chapter, he talks about how after Linda died he would dream of her in different scenarios, it became a safe haven for him, "But back then it felt like a miracle. My dreams had become a secret meeting place, and in the weeks after she died I couldn't wait to fall asleep at night" (244). I think his stories help with salvation because it helps make the war not seem so traumatizing. Stories are a way to make war seem like a thing of the past and not so much weight that has to be carried throughout the rest of someone's life. Made up stories become blurred with real ones and overtime the perspective on war begins to change, because what was reality is now mixed in with what is made up. Prime example of changing is later on Tim still dreams of Linda, "I'm forty three years old, and a writer now , still dreaming of Linda alive in exactly the same way. She's not the embodied Linda; she's mostly made up, with a new identity and a new name, like the man who never was" (245). His view of Linda has changed not the same as the original. 

]]> 2016-12-16 14:41:48 UTC https://padlet.com/ruoccop/discussion3/wish/144058573 620461 https://padlet.com/ruoccop/discussion3/wish/144058629 I think O'Brien's purpose of this ending was to show that death does not separate us from the dead. On page 244, O'Brien remembers some of the things Linda would say. "She'd say amazing things sometimes, 'Once you're alive' she'd say, 'you can never be dead.'" This is one connection that O'Brien has to someone he lost. Another example of this is on page 238. He says, "In Vietnam, too, we had ways of making the dead seem not quite so dead. Shaking hands, that was one way. By slighting death, by acting, we pretended it was not the terrible thing it was." O'Brien recollects that he never lost touch to the people who died in war with him. By tricking himself into thinking death was something else, he could still feel close to the people he lost. 

The connection that O'Brien makes between story and salvation is that stories ease the pain of losing someone you cared for. O'Brien states, "It was a kind of self-hypnosis. Partly willpower, partly faith, which is how stories arrive." (244) O'Brien also states, "She was dead. I understood that. After all, I'd seen her body, and yet even as a nine-year-old I had begun to practice the magic of stories." (244) In these two quotes, O'Brien references the origins of his stories. He mentions how he understands reality, however through stories he feels he can manipulate it. Salvation is defined as "preservation or deliverance from harm, ruin, or loss." O'Brien uses stories to preserve the memories and feelings he has with the people he has lost.]]> 2016-12-16 14:42:00 UTC https://padlet.com/ruoccop/discussion3/wish/144058629 https://padlet.com/ruoccop/discussion3/wish/144058977 2016-12-16 14:43:10 UTC https://padlet.com/ruoccop/discussion3/wish/144058977 626751 https://padlet.com/ruoccop/discussion3/wish/144058991 Tim O'Brien shared the loss of his true love at the age of nine. That is a very serious thing to grieve as a child. I think the purpose of sharing the story was to deepen our understand of coping with loss. Death doesn't just happen on a battlefield it can also happen to a nine year old fighting a brain tumor. In addition, even though he lost Linda that doesn't mean she was gone. Linda's memory lives on through the memory of her childhood love, that's why the story is called The Lives of The Dead. Tim O'Brien writes of how he would imagine Linda still alive when he was fallen asleep. He almost continued her life by imaging them together. It may not have been the real thing but it's how he kept Linda close because he would never want to forget her.]]> 2016-12-16 14:43:14 UTC https://padlet.com/ruoccop/discussion3/wish/144058991 https://padlet.com/ruoccop/discussion3/wish/144059203 I think O'Brien's purpose was to show that death happens everywhere not just in war everywhere and how we deal with that through dreaming.
We dream these people alive they become part of our minds our imagination and that keeps us running and moving through the day and keeps us from feeling that guilt. "They're all dead, But in a story."(225)
"Some i dreamed up. Others i wrote down- the scenes and dialogue. And at nighttime i'd slide into sleep knowing that Linda would be there waiting for me."(244) We use these dreams to keep living. 

]]> 2016-12-16 14:43:58 UTC https://padlet.com/ruoccop/discussion3/wish/144059203 805260 https://padlet.com/ruoccop/discussion3/wish/144059277 O'Brien's purpose is to show that while a person may be gone, telling their stories can keep them alive in a sense. While they might not be there in the present, they're living and breathing with their own personalities and hardships in the stories that are told of them. "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." (225) The connection between stories and salvation is that the dead are immortal through stories. As long as the stories are told, the people within them are preserved forever. "But in a story I can steal he soul. I can revive, at least briefly, that which is absolute and unchanging. In a story, miracles can happen. Linda can smile and sit up. She can reach out, touch my wrist, and say, 'Timmy, stop crying.'"(236) For a moment you can save their lives and its like they never left. ]]> 2016-12-16 14:44:15 UTC https://padlet.com/ruoccop/discussion3/wish/144059277 115498 https://padlet.com/ruoccop/discussion3/wish/144059464 O'Brien's purpose was to conclude his memoir with the underlying message that war has negative influence. First he talks about Linda. Although Linda died when O'Brien was 9, he still sees her in dreams and often writes them down as in recounting a story between them. Linda is still alive in his stories/dreams of her. He relates this back to war. "...When I take a high leap into the dark and come down thirty years later, I realize it is as Tim trying to save Timmy's life with a story" (O'Brien 246). O'Brien is talking about himself now and he is trying to keep himself alive as he was before the war. Looking back on his life, O'Brien knows he is not the same person as he was before the war. He is trying to remember his young happy self and keep it alive in order to deal with the memories of the terrible things he did during war. He finds salvation in stories, because in a way, he is a happy young boy again instead of a veteran with haunting memories of war.]]> 2016-12-16 14:44:50 UTC https://padlet.com/ruoccop/discussion3/wish/144059464 https://padlet.com/ruoccop/discussion3/wish/144060073 I think the connection between stories and salvation connects to his life when he was younger, mourning the life of Linda at the age of nine compared to the lives lost at war. Also, the memories that each one hold. For example, "But this too is true: stories can save us. I'm forty-three years old, and a writer now, and even still, right here, I keep dreaming Linda Alive. And Ted Lavender, too, and Kiowa, and Curt Lemon, and a slim young man I killed.... they're all dead. But in a story, which is kind of dreaming, the dead sometimes smile and sit up and return to the world. (pg.225)"]]> 2016-12-16 14:46:43 UTC https://padlet.com/ruoccop/discussion3/wish/144060073 620202 https://padlet.com/ruoccop/discussion3/wish/144060820 I think Tim included his nine year old lover's death as a way of showing that bad things do happen, even without war. That losing people you love is merely a fact of life and that there is nothing anyone can do to change that. "But this too is true: stories can save us. I'm forty-three years old, and a writer now, and even still, right here, I keep dreaming Linda Alive. And Ted Lavender, too, and Kiowa, and Curt Lemon, and a slim young man I killed.... they're all dead. But in a story, which is kind of dreaming, the dead sometimes smile and sit up and return to the world. (pg. 225)" So he wishes that those people that died were still alive but is aware that they are not and never will be.]]> 2016-12-16 14:49:07 UTC https://padlet.com/ruoccop/discussion3/wish/144060820 https://padlet.com/ruoccop/discussion3/wish/144061749 O'Brien shows that just because you lose someone, you can still have their memories as long as you still think about them or tell old stories. That's a good way to cope with losing a loved one is to think about the memories you have even though they're not still with you physically. "The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that others might then dream along with you, and in this memory and imagination and language combine to make spirits in the head." (228) ]]> 2016-12-16 14:52:11 UTC https://padlet.com/ruoccop/discussion3/wish/144061749 622179 https://padlet.com/ruoccop/discussion3/wish/144062867 When O'Brien talks about the young man that had died and how no one had said anything while they were getting him ready to be taken up, and then they used his phrases and asked his body the same question that they always did, and how it seemed to make the best out of their bad situation, for example, "how's the war today? There was a short quiet, "Mellow," somebody said. "Well, that's good," Sanders murmured, "that's real, real good. Stay cool now"(p.231).]]> 2016-12-16 14:56:21 UTC https://padlet.com/ruoccop/discussion3/wish/144062867 621830 https://padlet.com/ruoccop/discussion3/wish/144064587 I think the connection between stories and salvation connects to his life from the time that  he was younger and back to now. He continues to mourn the life of Linda, this was at the age of nine. Now compared to the lives lost at war that he is still sad and mourning about but also still talking about to others.. Also, the memories that each one of them had with him and the amount of importantance that they hold. For example theres a quote saying, "But this too is true: stories can save us. I'm forty-three years old, and a writer now, and even still, right here, I keep dreaming Linda Alive. And Ted Lavender, too, and Kiowa, and Curt Lemon, and a slim young man I killed.... they're all dead. But in a story, which is kind of dreaming, the dead sometimes smile and sit up and return to the world. (pg.225)" O'Brien's purpose is to show ans tell readerss that  while a person may be gone or sick or not around you, telling their stories can keep them alive in a sense. It can make them seem like they are still there with you and make you less sad about them being gone but make you happy when you remember all the good things with the person. They can also live through you, because they died sometimes people as though they have to make them proud or make sure their life is extra special because someone clsoe to them has died. 


]]> 2016-12-16 15:03:10 UTC https://padlet.com/ruoccop/discussion3/wish/144064587 616809 https://padlet.com/ruoccop/discussion3/wish/144064868 I didn't get what the point was bringing up Linda's death. I thought it was a cute moment but still, what's the deal?]]> 2016-12-16 15:04:04 UTC https://padlet.com/ruoccop/discussion3/wish/144064868 616809 https://padlet.com/ruoccop/discussion3/wish/144065570 The author is trying to show how even if a person dies, you can cope by simply imagining that they're there. That's a common way to cope with a loss. You can make up stories where the person is still there and can have them do whatever you like. I don't know why he wanted Linda giving him a reminder that she's dead by having her literally kick a bucket. ]]> 2016-12-16 15:06:33 UTC https://padlet.com/ruoccop/discussion3/wish/144065570