{"id":5274,"date":"2019-12-07T03:59:29","date_gmt":"2019-12-07T07:59:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=5274"},"modified":"2022-03-17T15:25:40","modified_gmt":"2022-03-17T19:25:40","slug":"the-things-they-carried-the-lives-of-the-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/the-things-they-carried-the-lives-of-the-dead\/","title":{"rendered":"The Things They Carried\u2014&#8221;The Lives of the Dead&#8221;: Chapter Guide"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>What happens in the chapter in <em>The Things They Carried<\/em> called &#8220;The Lives of the Dead&#8221;? How does &#8220;The Lives of the Dead&#8221; show the origins of author\/narrator O&#8217;Brien&#8217;s writing style and his belief in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/the-power-of-storytelling\/\">power of storytelling<\/a>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We&#8217;ll look at the basic elements of this chapter in <em>The Things They Carried<\/em>, &#8220;The Lives of the Dead,&#8221;<em> <\/em>and look at how a childhood love led to the narrator&#8217;s desire to write stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><em>The Things They Carried<\/em>: &#8220;The Lives of the Dead&#8221;<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>This chapter in <em>The Things They Carried<\/em>, &#8220;The Lives of the Dead,&#8221; is the last chapter of the book. Its main narrative is the last story O\u2019Brien shares with us is one that predates his Vietnam experience. But he sees it as of a piece with what happened to him later in life, because like the stories of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/ted-lavender-the-things-they-carried\/\">Ted Lavender<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/curt-lemon-the-things-they-carried-a-macho-soldier-faints\/\">Curt Lemon<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/kiowa-the-things-they-carried\/\">Kiowa<\/a>, and the young Vietnamese soldier, it is a tale of loss. It is the story of his <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/linda-the-things-they-carried\/\">childhood girlfriend Linda<\/a>, who died of a brain tumor when they were both nine years old.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><br>In this chapter in <em>The Things They Carried<\/em>, &#8220;The Lives of the Dead,&#8221; <strong>O\u2019Brien describes his love for Linda as being as deep and rich as any love he later experienced as an adult<\/strong>. He even took her out on a \u201cdouble date\u201d in 1956 with his parents. He remembers that evening, because she wore a bright red cap, which he\u2019d never seen her wear before.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the weeks after, he noticed that Linda was wearing the cap to school every day. She was bullied over it by some of her classmates, who thought it was funny to try and snatch it off her head while she wasn\u2019t looking. O\u2019Brien was dismayed to see this happening, but felt himself <strong>unable to act on his convictions because of his pride and his wish to maintain his reputation<\/strong> (just as he would years later when he ultimately decided to fight in Vietnam). He didn\u2019t want to be seen as less tough or masculine because he was defending a <em>girl<\/em>. Looking back, O\u2019Brien laments not having stepped in to do the right thing, and rejects his youth as an excuse. He notes in this chapter in <em>The Things They Carried<\/em>, &#8220;The Lives of the Dead,&#8221; that displaying moral courage in the fourth grade <strong>would have made him better prepared to face the far harder <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/moral-choices\/\">moral choices<\/a> in Vietnam.<\/strong><br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One day, a bully managed to knock Linda\u2019s cap off during class, revealing her bald scalp beneath. Linda was sick with a brain tumor and had lost all her hair\u2014she had been wearing the cap to cover it up. Later, O\u2019Brien\u2019s mother explained to him that Linda was terminally ill and would soon pass away from the tumor. Linda survived the school year and summer, but died during the September when O\u2019Brien was entering the fifth grade. Foreshadowing <strong>the callous and cold way death would be treated on the fields of Vietnam<\/strong>, the same bully who humiliated Linda in class told O\u2019Brien of her death by coming up to him during recess and telling him that Linda had \u201ckicked the bucket.\u201d<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>According to the narrator in this chapter in <em>The Things They Carried<\/em>, &#8220;The Lives of the Dead,&#8221; his experience with Linda was O\u2019Brien\u2019s first glimpse into the power of storytelling. After her death, he began to invent elaborate stories in which Linda was still alive. His dreams and his stories became his secret meeting place with his lost friend. He could bring Linda to life again by telling her story. He could make her real, make her smile and speak. In one of his dreams, the dead Linda likened herself to an old book on a library shelf that hadn\u2019t been checked out for a long time. <strong>All she could do was wait for someone to check her out\u2014for someone to tell her story and bring her to life again.<\/strong><br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Even amid the brutality of the war, the men were always telling stories about the dead to make them seem more vivid and present. This was how the line between <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/good-form-the-things-they-carried\/\">story-truth<\/a> and happening-truth became blurred. <strong>The more vivid the stories were, the more alive and of this world the dead seemed to be<\/strong>. If they could tell stories about Curt Lemon trick-or-treating through a rural Vietnamese village or Ted Lavender being sedated on tranquilizers, it was almost as if they weren\u2019t gone. <strong>Like with Linda, storytelling brought the body and soul together.<\/strong> This is the moral of this chapter in <em>The Things They Carried<\/em>, &#8220;The Lives of the Dead.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What happens in the chapter in The Things They Carried called &#8220;The Lives of the Dead&#8221;? How does &#8220;The Lives of the Dead&#8221; show the origins of author\/narrator O&#8217;Brien&#8217;s writing style and his belief in the power of storytelling? We&#8217;ll look at the basic elements of this chapter in The Things They Carried, &#8220;The Lives of the Dead,&#8221; and look at how a childhood love led to the narrator&#8217;s desire to write stories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":5284,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[63],"class_list":["post-5274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","tag-things-they-carried","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.3 (Yoast SEO v24.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Things They Carried\u2014&quot;The Lives of the Dead&quot;: Chapter Guide - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Learn what happened in this chapter of The Things They Carried, &quot;The Lives of the Dead,&quot; and how a childhood love led to the narrator&#039;s need to write stories.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/the-things-they-carried-the-lives-of-the-dead\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Things They Carried\u2014&quot;The Lives of the Dead&quot;: Chapter Guide\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Learn what happened in this chapter of The Things They Carried, &quot;The Lives of the Dead,&quot; and how a childhood love led to the narrator&#039;s need to write stories.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/the-things-they-carried-the-lives-of-the-dead\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Shortform Books\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2019-12-07T07:59:29+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2022-03-17T19:25:40+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/things-carried-lives-of-dead.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"765\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"495\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Amanda Penn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Amanda Penn\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/the-things-they-carried-the-lives-of-the-dead\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/the-things-they-carried-the-lives-of-the-dead\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Amanda Penn\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/01b0e4c9ddb993e51d03808839d538b0\"},\"headline\":\"The Things They Carried\u2014&#8221;The Lives of the Dead&#8221;: Chapter Guide\",\"datePublished\":\"2019-12-07T07:59:29+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2022-03-17T19:25:40+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/the-things-they-carried-the-lives-of-the-dead\/\"},\"wordCount\":796,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/the-things-they-carried-the-lives-of-the-dead\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/things-carried-lives-of-dead.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"The Things They Carried\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Books\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/the-things-they-carried-the-lives-of-the-dead\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/the-things-they-carried-the-lives-of-the-dead\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/the-things-they-carried-the-lives-of-the-dead\/\",\"name\":\"The Things They Carried\u2014\\\"The Lives of the Dead\\\": Chapter Guide - 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