Well, I’ll be going home soon I hear. I’m very excited about it! It’s been a long time since I’ve seen that place. Thinking about home makes me think about Linda, so I’ve been doing a lot of that lately. When I was nine, I fell in love with a her. I know that may sound crazy but even today I can’t deny that it was love, I’m sure of it. One day we went out to the movies and she wore this red cap. I remember that I liked it, a lot actually, and it was the first time I had ever seen her wear it. From then on, she never took the cap off, even at school. Kids would tease her and one day, someone pulled the cap off her head. I saw that her head was almost completely bald, with a scar on the side of her skull. I would find out later that Linda had cancer. She died a few months later.
Death, obviously, does not just occur in war. It happens to everyone. The living view death as something that is terrible, irreversible, the enemy. No one wants to face death, why would they? Death is harsh. I’ve experienced the deaths of my friends and of Linda, the one I loved. I’ve had to learn to bear these deaths, like weights they seemed. But, death can be dealt with, using tactics and stories to bring the dead back, to remember them. Through all my experiences with this war, I’ve learned that death is not as much the enemy as I thought it was. Now, I’m not saying its good, but it can be dealt with, as hard as that seems to imagine.
After Linda died, I had to will myself to find ways to bring her back. I was able to, in my dreams, through my memories of her. Just like, through memories, my fellow soldiers from the Vietnam war could bring back a fallen soldier by telling stories as though he were still around. The weight of the loss does not have to be as big a burden this way. Death does not have to always have to be the enemy.
Return with the Elixir is the final stage in the Hero Journey. This is when the Hero returns back to his or her ordinary world with a reward or knowledge to share. In Tim's post, he talks about death and how it doesn't always have to be as burdensome as it usually is. If you keep the lives of the dead living,through memories and stories, you can make it easier.
ReplyDeleteThis represents Return with the Elixir because Tim has furthered his knowledge due to this journey he has been on with the Vietnam War. He's learned that yes, death is not a pleasent thing but, through stories, experiencing a loss can be made a little lighter. "In Vietnam we had ways of making the dead seem not quite so dead. Shaking hands, that was one way. By slighting death, by acting, we pretended it was not the terrible thing it was." (225). "We kept the dead alive with stories." (226)