The Lives of the Dead

• • Make a Unique Claim and support it well

  • Quote from the text for support (USING PAGE NUMBERS)

  • Respond to 2 peers who’ve answered the 2 questions you did not in your first post

  • 250 words for post 1, 100 words for post 2 & 3

  • Title your post in Bold with either of the following, depending on whether it is your 1st post or a response post:

    • Q#: First Post

    • or

    • Q#: Response

 

Q1 – Living Again Through Stories: In “The Lives of the Dead,” O’Brien describes how stories can make the dead live again, outside of our own time/space dimension—in a dreamlike reality. He states on page 218: “The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that others might then dream along with you, and in this way memory and imagination and language combine to make sprits in the head. There is the illusion of aliveness.” He also talks a lot about the nature of successful story-telling—the “rules” and where one can break them (107). Provide an example from any other story in the book where O’Brien brings to life a person who died and analyze its effectiveness and power. Is the person portrayed whole, authentic, three-dimensional, and real? What is it about that particular story that allows O’Brien to succeed in achieving this quality of reality?

 

Q2 – The Transient Nature of “Truth”: Throughout all of his stories in The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien deals with the transient nature of truth. In “How to Tell a True War Story,” O’Brien states: “Absolute occurrence is irrelevant. A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth” (79-80). Discuss what you think O’Brien means by this. Identify an instance in any of the stories we’ve read where this idea—what happened vs. O’Brien’s definition of truth—comes into play. Analyze the instance thoroughly and be specific by providing evidence from the text.

 

Q3 – War in Literature: Quite a few of the pieces that we have read this quarter have talked conflicts between nations or smaller groups of people. (Lord of the Rings, Dracula) How does The Things They Carried compare to these other readings in its presentation of conflict and war? Are there similarities or differences, and if so why do they matter? Why do you think war is such a common element of the stories we have read? Remember to quote from the text to support your claim.