Final Chapter

The ending of TTTC appears to step away from the entire story leading up to it. We travel back in time before Vietnam to when O’Brien was a nine-year-old boy. He talks about the first time he ever witnessed a dead body as a young child. Tim finds himself having to cope with the loss of a girl he loved to a brain tumor. O’Brien goes into talking about how he dealt with the loss by using stories to bring her back to life and make it as though she was never dead.

The final chapter talks about how death changed its definition over time as he saw more and more of it in the jungle of Vietnam. He starts to realize that a person never truly dies if their story continues to be told. Just as O’Brien keeps Linda alive through memory and storytelling, this entire book keeps those he lost in Vietnam alive as well. This made me second guess all the stories in the book because he told stories to keep people alive so how many of this platoon mates were actually alive and present for those actions and how many were just thought to be there because they were dead?  The end of this book reminds me a lot of the movie Inception, the end of that movie cuts away with a scene of little spinner spinning and appearing as though it is about to fall over signaling it is the real world and not a dream state, but before it can fall the screen goes black leaving you guessing what the truth is. This book gave that same sort of feeling in the end by having O’Brien the writer say that the best way to keep someone alive is through story even if they were made up.

Comments

  1. Hailey SchendelDecember 5, 2018 at 5:05 PM

    I agree that O'Brien used the last chapter to bring back his memories of the past. I liked that you mentioned that he is using the last chapter to bring Linda back to life and to keep her spirit alive. In addition, I liked how you said that a person never truly dies if their story continues to be told. Stories are meant to preserve the memories of the past while keeping the spirits of those who died alive.

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