Exploration Six

"But this too is true: stories can save us. I'm forty-three years old, and a writer now, and even still, right here, I keep dreaming Linda alive." This chapter, this story about Linda had meant the most to me because it tells us how to make the dead come back to life. "That's what a story does. The bodies are animated. You make the dead talk." I could relate to this because sometimes I think of stories in my mind or of memories that brought a person back to life for me. It just struck me how much Tim had loved Linda at such a young age and brought her back to life so much. He had started to sleep earlier and earlier just so he could dream and be with her. "I didn't want to lose Linda. She was dead. I understood that." This struck me because I feel like Tim didn't really know how to cope with someone dying, especially at such a young age that he had loved, but then again, who are we to decide what's the proper way to cope with death? I just feel that he should have tried to talk with his parents, friends, or someone, rather keep it to himself.

The character in this book that I can relate the most to is Tim mainly because it's hard to relate to any soldier in the first place for me. I can relate to Tim the most because I have lost a few people in my life. I feel like, to a point, I could relate to his story of On A Rainy River, but not to the full extent. I know how it feels to feel like a coward. To want to flee from where I am and just go someplace else where it wouldn't matter, but the thought of leaving my life behind was something I couldn't do. Also, feeling betrayed because he wasn't in the group anymore, he couldn't connect with them anymore, this is all real to me because as I was reading that part in Ghost Stories, I think of the time my friends had just stopped inviting me to go to the movies with them. Like I had been kicked out and been replaced with new people.

Some similarities I see with Tim in The Thing They Carried and Tanya from Rebirth was that both of them lad lost someone they loved, but in a sense, they kept holding onto them like, Tim going into his dreams and disconnecting from the world and Tanya not getting married yet, holding onto the things of Sergio. They didn't want to let the go of the dead . A difference between them is the lives they went through, Tim had to still see his comrades die, and Tanya just had one death to deal with.