Chapters 21 & 22

"Night Life"

Important Sections of the Chapter

1). "It was the purest black you could imagine, Sanders said, the kind of clock-stopping black that God must've had in mind when he sat down to invent blackness. It made you eyeballs ache. You'd shake your head and blink, except you couldn't even tell you were blinking, the blackness didn't change." (pg. 220) 

ANALYSIS

This quote belongs to the chapter entitled "Night Life" and as the title states it talks about Vietnam at night. However, the mood of the chapter alongside the way the author writes the vignette sets a suspenseful tone that merely illustrates the horrors of war and most specifically, Vietnam at night.

The soldiers refer to their fears as "living the night life" and the way they identify it is through the "blackness". However, it is this "blackness" that emphasizes the horrors of war and Vietnam because it forces the soldiers of the Company to stay close to one another, feel each other, and talk to each other to make sure they are not alone and isolated from the light, which in war purposes, would symbolize the hope.

Consequently, this is a vignette about horror and the madness that comes hand in hand with the cruelty and crudity of war. 

"The Lives of the Dead"

Important Sections of the Chapter

1). "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." (pg. 225)

ANALYSIS

This is one of the first quotes of the final chapter of the novel "The Things They Carried." In it, O'Brien talks about the importance of storytelling and how through it, one can bring back the dead and makes them "return to world", suggesting that he uses his stories, his characters and his setting as a means of escape from reality, as a source of comfort where nothing is ugly or crude, and there is but peace and life. 

2). "I was Timmy then; now I'm Tim." (pg. 236)

ANALYSIS

This sentence talks about the impact of war. The author, Tim O'Brien acts like a narrator once again and talks about his childhood and his first love experience. 

He claims that he "hasn't changed at all" after all those years at war but then contradicts himself through this phrase, which suggests that even though he hasn't changed physically, he has lost his inner "Timmy", which symbolizes the innocence and candor of youth and converted it to "Tim" indicating that reality, sorrow, guilt and death memories have replaced it.