O'Brien's Purpose

O'Brien's purpose is controversial. However, there are two main reasons O'Brien wrote this story. The first reason is to immortalize people, not only victims of the war, but people whose lives have been unjustifiably taken from them like Linda. By telling their stories in his book, O'Brien makes the characters "come to life". In the "Lives of the Dead" short story, he says, "But this too it 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. And Ted, Lavender too, and Kiowa, and Curt Lemon, and a slim young man I killed and an old man sprawled besides a pigpen, and several others whose bodies I lifted and umped into a truck. They're all dead. But in a story, which is kind of dreaming, the dead sometimes smile and sit up and return to the world." (O'Brien 213). By writing (dreaming) about the dead he brings them back to life and allows people to be aware of them, making their characters immortal. The second major reason is O'Brien uses it as a form of therapy, or in his words, "clarity and explanation". In the story "Notes", O'Brien says, "...the act of writing had led me through a swirl of of memories that might otherwise have ended in paralysis or worse. By telling stories, you objectify your own experience. You separate it from yourself. You start sometimes with an incident that truly happened, like the night in the shit field, and you carry it forward by inventing incidents that did not in fact occur but that nonetheless help to clarify and explain." (152). So, by writing, O'Brien and the reader can better understand the war and O'Brien can acquire the comfort in clarity.