Pamintuan O’Brien, author of “The Lives of the

Pamintuan 1 Kailii Pamintuan Severin Allgood ENGL 2201-304 September 14, 2018 Theme Analysis Every person in the world has some concept of what love is and what they imagine it to be. People grow up with these ideas of what love should be and carry them into their relationships. Both Tim O’Brien, author of “The Lives of the Dead”, and David Foster Wallace, author of “Good People”, explore the idea of love within their short stories.

The main characters of these stories have contrasting views on love and their understandings of it. The authors use different writing techniques and literary devices to develop these different ideas. Between the two stories a theme is then created which shows how love comes in many shapes and forms and is not always easy to distinguish. Tim O’Brien’s “The Lives of the Dead” approaches the idea of love with the story of a childhood romance that the narrator always understood to be love. The main character Tim O’Brien tells the story of his relationship with his first love Linda. He begins describing his feelings: “Linda was nine then, as was I, but we were in love. And it was real” (O’Brien 74).

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In this quote, O’Brien is exploring the idea of a juvenile relationship being genuine love. By adding in the punctuation between the two sentences O’Brien creates a dramatic effect emphasizing the seriousness in the narrator’s feelings towards Linda. O’Brien also adds more depth and complexity to their relationship, by simply having the narrator say, “we were in love.” If he had instead said I, it would have been easier to dismiss this claim as a one-sided infatuation towards Linda. O’BrienPamintuan 2 further builds this idea of a serious juvenile relationship by writing, “When I write about her now, three decades later, it’s tempting to dismiss it as a crush, an infatuation of childhood, but I know for a fact that the feelings we felt for each other were as deep and rich as love can ever get” (O’Brien 74). O’Brien gives an even deeper value to the narrator and Linda’s relationship here. When the narrator talks about his feelings towards Linda as an adult, it makes his claim of having a real love for Linda much more credible.

O’Brien describes their love as deep and rich and explains that their love was not infatuation. This use of diction is not that of a child, but of an adult. His choice of wording indicates that the narrator’s feelings for Linda were mature and well understood. The main character of “The Lives of the Dead” offers an opinion on love as being something you can feel and understand well, regardless of age. Love is also a connection that runs deeply between two people that is mutually felt. David Foster Wallace’s “Good people” takes a different approach to the idea of love by depicting a character who despite having been in an adult relationship with his partner for a while, is still unsure of whether he loves her and what love itself is. Throughout this story the main character, Lane A. Dean Jr.

has an internal debate on how to speak to his girlfriend Sheri about what to do with their unborn child. In this conflict Lane becomes detached from Sheri claiming that it’s her decision to make alone. Not only did he feel a lack of connection to her in this decision, but in general as well stating, “He could look at her head, but not at her.

Different parts of him felt unconnected to each other” (Wallace 255). Lane and Sheri met in junior college, as young adults and then began to date one another. The two have a presumably intimate with one another as well. Despite the intimacy and maturity of this relationship, Lane explains how he does not feelPamintuan 3 close to Sheri. At this point in the story Lane does not define what they have in their relationship as love.

He cannot communicate his feelings to her properly, let alone even look her in the eye. The characters have a large disconnect within their relationship. It isn’t until further along in the story after Lane has had time for self-reflection that he even begins to consider the possibility of loving Sheri: There on the table, neither frozen nor yet moving, Lane Dean Jr.

, sees all this, and is moved with pity, and also with something more, something without any name he knows, that is given to him in the form of a question that never once in a long week’s thinking and division had even so much as occurred—why is he so sure he doesn’t love her? (Wallace 258) In this section of the story Lane has a realization that he could indeed love Sheri but is unaware of what love even feels like. This something more he describes is his possible feelings of love that he does not understand, the feeling is foreign to him and he can’t clearly identify it. Wallace created Lane to be a conflicted character unsure of his true feelings to explore another side of understanding what love is.

Lane’s understanding of love is unsure despite being a young adult. His depiction of love is hard to grasp and unfamiliar. The two different writers create very opposite takes on what love is and how their characters understand their relationships regarding love. O’Brien’s character is more sure of himself and his feelings while Wallace’s characters is constantly conflicted and is always second guessing his thoughts.

O’Brien also has a more romanticized approach towards defining his characters opinion on love while Wallace’s take on love is likely more realistic. In “The Lives of the Dead” O’Brien writes, “It had all the shadings andPamintuan 4 complexities of mature adult love, and maybe more, because there were not yet words, for it and because it was not yet fixed to comparisons or chronologies or the ways by which adults measure such things. I just loved her” (O’Brien 74). Once again O’Brien uses more complex and large words to describe the love felt between children. It is a juvenile relationship with adult feelings. He uses a very poetic writing style to enhance the feelings of a pure and true love. However, in “Good People” Wallace writes “Why is one kind of love any different? What if he has no earthly idea what love is?” (Wallace 258). Wallace poses questions through his character about what love is.

The character is still conflicted in his emotions and is trying to understand them. While the main character questions for himself this can provoke readers to question their own ideas of love as well. When comparing Lane to Tim, Lane is an adult with a juvenile understanding of love. Tim is sure he loves Linda despite losing her at a young age, and Lane is an adult who questions his love for Sheri despite being intimate with her. These different characters’ understandings of love contrast one another creating a bigger picture of what love is. Love is something that is experienced and understood differently by each unique individual that exists. Not all people can identify feelings of love immediately. Both authors take a very different approach in telling the stories of characters with contrasting ideas and understandings of love.

O’Brien takes a sentimental approach with a story of young love the now adult narrator stills considers to be honest, true love. Wallace takes a more guarded approach to love with the story of an adult man unsure of whether or not he even loves his girlfriend, or knows what love actually is. “The Lives of the Dead” and “Good People” both create one of a kind perspectives on the many ways love can be interpreted.Pamintuan 6 Works Cited O’Brien, Tim.

“The Lives of the Dead.” The Norton Introduction to Literature. Ed. Kelly J. Mays. Las Vegas: University of Nevada, 2016. 72-83.

Print Foster Wallace, David. “Good People.” The Norton Introduction to Literature. Ed.

Kelly J. Mays. Las Vegas: University of Nevada, 2016. 253-258. Print

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