life in the memory of the living

In the last chapter, “The Lives of the Dead,” Tim O’Brien tells stories that are centered around the dead’s life in the memory of the living. O’Brien’s childhood sweetheart died of cancer before the 5th grade, an event that traumatized O’Brien. However, in his dreams and in his memories thirty years later, Linda lives on, an idealized, nine-year-old girl. In this way, by writing about Linda and those O’Brien witnessed die in Vietnam, they continue to live in his mind and in the mind of the reader. Even when thinking about Linda, O’Brien states “sometimes I can even see Timmy skating with Linda under the yellow floodlights. I’m young and happy. I’ll never die” (O’Brien 224). In this way, even past selfs live on in memory and on paper. O’Brien’s company constantly made jokes concerning the dead. While to the reader these may seem extremely insensitive and crude, O’Brien tells us that it was the only way for the men to cope with death. “By our language, which was both hard and wistful, we transformed the bodies into piles of waste. Thus, when someone got killed, as Curt Lemon did, his body was not really a body, but rather one small bit of waste in the midst of a much wider wastage” (O’Brien 218). Therefore, by dehumanizing the bodies of their friends, they were able to dismiss death and take their friends with them through the war in form of storytelling. They would never die, as long as they didn’t forget them.