Exploration 7 revision

    
The story that stood out to me the most from the last stories we read was "The lives of the dead."  The reason this stood out to me more than the other stories was because it seemed like it had much more meaning than the other stories. O'Brien writes about his love for Linda and you can really feel the emotion that seems to bleed out of the pages. the biggest impact that this story had on the reader was the way O'Brien showed his love for Linda and how unique it was. the main theme in this story was that O'Brien trys to show how you can keep someone alive through storytelling. he shows how he tells stories about Linda and he almost feels like she is alive during the story. This is a reoccuring motif throughout the story; the characters tell stories about their fallen comrads to, in a way, keep them alive. Its the only way to bring them back to life. This story told a lot about human nature and how humans cope with the harsh reality of war. The soldiers would sometimes make light of death to make it seem less terrible. "they were scared to die but they were even more scared to show it." This means that the thing that scared them most was showing their fear of death and looking like a coward, so they would make light of it. Every mans worst fear is being a coward no matter how much they would like to just shoot a toe off and go home, they would never risk looking like a coward. The thing that I will take away from this book is how powerful writing can be. Writing has the power to temporarily bring people back to life in a way, it can help people cope with war and express their true feelings about it. This book makes me really apreciate the fact that there are men and women that protect this country so that I can enjoy the freedoms that I have. The men and women may only surve for a few years of their lif but the psycological affects can last a lifetime. They sacrifice their wellbeing for my freedom and that deserves the highest level of respect.