QUIZ
Group DISCUSSIONS
Chapter 22: “The Lives of the Dead”
1. How does the opening paragraph frame the story we are about to read?
2. Why is O'Brien unable to joke around with the other soldiers? Why does the old man remind him of Linda?
3. What is the function of the Linda plot in “The Lives of the Dead”? Consider in particular what it teaches him about death, memory, storytelling.
4. What is the “moral” of the dead KIAs? Consider Mitchell Sanders' view.
5. In many ways, this book is as much about stories, or the necessity of stories, as it is about the Vietnam War. According to O’Brien, what do stories accomplish? Why does he continue to tell stories about the Vietnam War, about Linda?
6. Reread the final two pages of this book. Consider what the young Tim O’Brien learns about storytelling from his experience with Linda. How does this knowledge prepare him not only for the war, but also to become a writer? Within the parameters of this story, how would you characterize Tim O’Brien’s understanding of the purpose of fiction? How does fiction relate to life, that is, life in the journalistic or historic sense?
Overall:
1. Assume for a moment, that the writer, Tim O’Brien, created a fictional main character, also called Tim O’Brien, to inhabit this novel. Why would the real Tim O’Brien do that? What would that accomplish in this novel? How would that strengthen a book about “truth”?
2. Finally, if O’Brien is trying to relate some essential details about emotional life – again as opposed to historic life – is he successful in doing that? Is he justified in tinkering with the facts to get at, what he would term, some larger, story-truth?
3. On the copyright page of the novel appears the following: “This is a work of fiction. Except for a few details regarding the author's own life, all the incidents, names, and characters are imaginary.” How does this statement affect your reading of the novel?
Matan, Caleb, Thomas and Darren
ReplyDeleteChapter 22:
3. The function of the Linda plot in "The Lives of the Dead" is that using this, O'Brien shows the importance of storytelling in keeping people alive. He uses the plot to reflect upon his earliest experiences with death, and then uses all the cases of death that he's seen in order to tell how stories can potentially keep dead people alive, in the form of the preservation of memories of them.
5. Stories accomplish the establishment of immortality for those that have passed away. They create a world in which even though the people died, they keep on living in the stories. He continues telling stories about the Vietnam War and Linda so that he can express his feelings about his experience, and he uses them to give the work a deeper meaning.
3. After death and after the things we experience fade into the past, the only way to keep our memories alive is by remembering them through stories. Linda is his first experience with death and how stories are a source of life. Linda's death takes away his innocence. To cope with his loss, he dreams stories. The only way to revive someone who is gone is to read their story; they can't read it to you, you have to seek it out.
ReplyDelete6. O'Brien uses the coping mechanism he used when dealing with Linda to deal with all of the death he faces in Vietnam. In order to continue this revival of the dead, he records the stories he uses to cope and puts them into a book for others to read. He finds solace in the notion that the lives that are lost are being continued. Linda is a metaphor for this, she symbolizes the tragedy of experiencing death for the first time, and his story dreams symbolize "The Things They Carried".
~Oona, Piper, Alina, Gretta
Group A: 9th period: (the cool one)
ReplyDelete1: it brings up the topic of death and how people are able to be "brought to life" with stories.
2: because Tim already experienced a close personal death and can not have the same lighthearted attitude towards death.
3: people can be revived through story and memory and you can express feelings that you might not have been able to during their lives.
5: it gives Tim O'Brien closure to the reality and tough events and experiences that he lived through in the past.
6: Each of the separate stories in "The Things They Carried" represent a different theme mirrored in life. By relating these stories to strong emotional events, Tim O'Brien makes the audience more connected to each individual theme creating the whole idea of a greater truth. Although these events never happened, they bring us closer to understanding the greater truths and overarching themes.