Response: "What is O'Brien's purpose in writing this novel?"

O’Brien tells stories in The Things They Carried to honor the dead by keeping them alive. The Linda in O’Brien’s head describes being dead as “being inside a book no one is reading…all you can do is just wait and hope that somebody’ll pick it up and start reading” (O’Brien 232). O’Brien states that writing is about remembering which will “leas to a story, which makes it forever… [writing joins] the past and the future” (O’Brien 36). Remembering keeps people alive even if they are no longer physically alive.