The End

" And then it becomes 1990. I'm forty-three years old, and a writer now, still dreaming Linda alive in exactly the same way. She's not the embodied Linda; she's mostly made up, a new identity, a new name' like the man who never was. Her real name doesn't matter. She was nine years old. I loved her and then she died. And yet right here, in the spell of memory and imagination, I can still see her as if through ice, as if I'm gazing into some other world, a place where there are no brain tumors and no funeral homes, where there are no bodies at all. I can see Kiowa, too, and Ted Lavender and Curt Lemon, and sometimes I can even see Timmy skating with Linda under the yellow floodlights. I'm young and happy. I'll never die. I'm skimming across the surface of my own history, moving fast, riding the melt beneath the blades, doing loops and spins, and when I take a high leap into the dark and come down thirty years later, I realize it is as Tim trying to save Timmy's life with a story." (p. 232-3)

With this the story ends. It is a bit confusing trying to figure out what O'Brien is saying by this, but I have some idea. I believe that O'Brien is trying to say that by writing several books, he keeps trying to prove and sustain the innocence of the boy he once was. Through war and fighting he has lost that innocence, but he believes that if he can write the story correctly he can bring it back, remind people of what he once was. For all of the violence in this story, this is the most comforting and peaceful ending, more so than could be expected. In a way, it is a nice ending, but it is also unexpected. However, I wish that I could figure out the root of this book and and of this final chapter, because it leaves me a little confused in the end. I would like to know what O'Brien really wanted to teach through this novel, what I was meant to learn. What I have taken away is that war will always have lasting effects that can never be counteracted. These scars will continue on until wars are ended and peace is sustained. This is what I think O'Brien was trying to say.