O'Brien's Purpose For Writing the Novel

O'Brien tells stories to attempt to bring the dead back to life, but he publishes these stories in a novel to immortalize himself. At the end of the novel O'Brien clearly reveals that he keeps "dreaming Linda alive [,] and Ted Lavender too, and Kiowa, and Curt Lemon, and a slim young man [he] killed", "but in a story, which is kind of dreaming, the dead sometimes smile and sit up and return to the world" (O'Brien 213) (O'Brien 213). For Linda, Ted, Kiowa, and Curt, he dreams them into stories so he can see and love them again; whereas for the man he killed, his dreaming is a coping mechanism to bring the man he killed back to life and show his regret for what he did. O'Brien has a separate more selfish motive for publishing the novel, to make himself immortal. Although O'Brien is not yet dead he will be some day, and by sharing these stories he can make the dead "sit up and return to the world" (O'Brien 213). The entire novel is in first person through the eyes of Tim O'Brien himself, and at this point millions of people are telling his story to themselves and others because of the novel. In the last paragraph O'Brien reveals that this is in-fact a motive, claiming that " [he's] young and happy, [he'll] never die" (O'Brien 233). O'Brien also specifically states that he is young, because The Things They Carried tells of Tim's life, but also Timmy's. O'Brien does "realize it is Tim trying to save Timmy's life with a story", by bringing him back to life every time his story is told (O'Brien 233).