19. Linda

After I finished the novel, I took a night to ponder the reasons for Linda. It seemed a little out of place in a book all about Vietnam and its effects. Yet, as I look back to the beginning of the chapter, with the actual dead Vietnamese man, I found a connection between the two. The men of Alpha Company are one with death by encountering the man physically, which in O’Brien’s early days of the war he did not understand. O’Brien understood encountering the dead in a different way, through his dreams. Trough his dreams, he would make her come alive and not make death such a horrible occurrence. However, when O’Brien is literally in contact with death he cannot bear it. This time, death is not a figment of his imagination. He cannot make this man’s body live again like with Linda. He has no memory of this man alive.
Yet, this gives him another reason to write, besides to release the things he carries. In his stories, the lives of the dead are not forgotten, just like the metaphor of a checked out book from the shelf (pg 232, O’Brien). In O’Brien’ story, they are not forgotten.