From my last post, I got a lot of thoughtful comments, especially Brian's that really made me start thinking about why O'Brien chose to add the chapter "Good Form" where he did, and I've decided to go more in depth about that in my open topic post for this week.
Like I said, as a reader, you really have to already accept that the factual validity of the story doesn't matter. If you haven't come to terms with that, you aren't likely to understand the book and its purpose, and it won't matter where he put the chapter in. It doesn't matter if it's true. What matters is if you can feel what he felt when you read his words.
In the last chapter of the book, "The Lives of the Dead," we learn about Linda. I believe this is why he put "Good Form" where he did. Linda, his first love, dies of cancer at age nine, and he still dreams her alive. Linda is O'Brien's way of connecting love to war. After all, a war story isn't really about war, is it? It's about love.
"It wasn't a war story. It was a love story" (O'Brien 85).
O'Brien is trying to tell us that the whole book isn't really about war. It's about love, and Linda is the final connection. On O'Brien's fourth day at war, he sees a dead old man, who reminds him of Linda. He still dreams her alive, because that's his way of saving her. He still dreams Ted Lavender and Kiowa and the old man and Curt Lemon alive, because a war story isn't really about war. It's about love.
Was there really a Linda? Did she really exist? Did she really wear a little red cap and die at the age of nine from a brain tumor?
Does it matter?
4 comments:
The idea that Linda never really existed is a unique way of looking at how Tim O’Brien coped with the war. I believe though that Linda did exist and her memory helped him when he started dealing with death during Vietnam. His dreams that he had about Linda might have been more of an imagination that he had about her. Linda served as a spiritual guardian to help him deal with grief in my opinion.
You know how much this whole "I want to know the truth" thing kills me Ashleigh. I hadn't even begun to question whether Linda was real or not and now that you said that it's going to kill me! I understand why he did what he did for the novel and I feel you expressed it very well but I don't think I'll ever personally get oveR the fact that I was lied to and manipulated. :) Isn't that a crime or something?
Lol! I'm sorry, Brian.
I'd really like to think that Linda did actually exist, but you can never really know. O'Brien admitted to us that everything else he wrote was just made up, but I don't think he does this to confuse us. I think it's more to get us to think. If he just told us straight out, we wouldn't think about it as much. He wants us to try to understand what he's going through and what helped him through the war.
But it bugs me too, honestly. I didn't mind that all of the other stories were made up, but Linda? That story just got to me. Somehow, I can see how he could make it up, and why he would, but I'd personally prefer to believe that she was real.
You can never really know though.
Ashleigh, your work this week was so great -- you really gave everyone so much to think about!
I appreciated the dialogue, and the insights of others in this thread, too. Kyle, very interesting! Brian, you poor thing -- wishing for truth in a fiction class ;)
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