The Things They Carried; Scraine Griffin

In the last chapter of The Things They Carried, Tim told a story about a girl named Linda. Linda was a really close friend of Tim’s and was only nine years old when she died. I thought Tim’s story about Linda was randomly thrown into the book because she doesn’t really have a whole lot to do with the war itself, but at the same time she makes a connection all her own. I thought that she made a connection to the war because she was so close to Tim and he had to watch her die much like all of the friends that he had to see die in the war. Sometimes it is really hard to see someone so close to you die so abruptly. Also, Linda was the first dead person that Tim saw which was significant because no matter what happens, his reaction to a dead person will never change. Tim “loved her [when] she died” and even though the story about her is a story that involves a “made up” Linda, it is still a story that keeps him hanging on because he sees himself as the “young and happy” Timmy (O’Brien, 245, 246) .

O'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. New York, NY: Broadway Books, 1999. Print