The Valpo Core Reader
 

Document Type

Life and Death Essay

Publication Date

10-20-2011

Excerpt

Death is an inevitable part of human life; all of us will eventually experience it. The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien is a work of fiction about an American platoon during the Vietnam War, but throughout the book, the narrator keeps insisting that the book is real, only to contradict himself after a few pages. O’Brien does not do that because he is just an eccentric writer, but he is trying to make us believe these fictional characters’ deaths and hardships are real, in order to convey a message about how there is beauty in death and how focusing on it could help us cope with our grief.

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Copyright © 2011 by Valparaiso University and the Author. Use with permission.

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