As we got closer to the end of the book, a new character was introduced. Her name was Linda. Linda was a very odd character to add in at the end of the book. I was confused as to why he just threw her in when she had no relativity to the war. Tim was in love with Linda when they were nine. Why does he put in a young girl he loved in 4th grade that dies of cancer into the end? He says that he even has dreams about her still to this day. “She had poise and great dignity. Her eyes, I remember, were deep brown like her hair, and she was slender and very quiet and fragile-looking” (228). This quote describes how he’s forty-three and he still remembers what she looks like. He has dreams about her almost every night he said and she talks to him. As he got older, he made up how she matured and the qualities that she possessed. Why he still has dreams about her is a mystery to me. Tim is not scared of her, or what she looks like. He wants to talk to her and they even go ice skating in his dream. To me Linda’s stocking cap symbolizes the cover up of the hideousness of war. She wears it cover up her bald head and the stitches and scars. This is also true with war. We try to cover it up to make us think that war for us was a win, but when really we were losing and everyone loses in war. The stoking cap was a big symbol for the hideousness of war.
O'Brain, Tim. The Things They Carried. New York: Broadway Books, 1987. Print.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Courtney, I really liked the way you linked the cap with the hideousness of war. I never would have thought of that and it really made me think. I saw her as symbolizing the first dead body he had ever seen and how now his life was in such a different place. As of now in his life he has seen many dead bodies between the men he has killed and the men that have died in his group. I really liked reading your idea because it made me think of new possibilities.
ReplyDeleteI think you did a really nice job connecting the two together. The two meaning, war and Linda’s cap. I also think that it symbolizes other aspects of the war though, not just the grotesque details of war. I think she, herself, represents the knowledge of death that the soldiers have when they go into the war. Because she has cancer, she also knows she is going to die just like they soldiers do as well. i htink you did a nice job with the symbolism though!
ReplyDelete-Catalina Nunez
I completely agree that Linda is a powerful symbol for the entire war and her losing battle with cancer is a symbol for the losing efforts in Vietnam. An interesting comparison was the hat, which I had not thought of before, symbolizing the attempt to cover up the losing effort in the war
ReplyDelete