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Hyperbole
Definition of Idiom
An idiom is a phrase that conveys a figurative meaning that is difficult or impossible to understand based solely on a literal interpretation of the words in the phrase. For... read full definition
An idiom is a phrase that conveys a figurative meaning that is difficult or impossible to understand based solely on a literal interpretation of the... read full definition
An idiom is a phrase that conveys a figurative meaning that is difficult or impossible to understand based solely on... read full definition
The Lives of the Dead
Explanation and Analysis—Linda Kicks the Bucket:
In the collection's final story, "The Lives of the Dead," the narrator shares a flashback from his childhood. When he's nine years old, a girl he loves dies from a brain tumor. However, when he first learns about her death, the news is delivered to him through an idiom. The indirect language makes it simultaneously easier and more difficult to process Linda's death. As a child, O'Brien fixates on this idiom. As an adult, he fixates on the way we use language to abstract difficult emotions.
Before Linda dies, O'Brien's mother attempts to prepare him for what's coming, telling him that people "die sometimes." This is far more direct than the formulation O'Brien receives when Linda actually dies:
“Your girlfriend,” he said, “she kicked the bucket.”
At first I didn’t understand.
“She’s dead,” he said. “My mom told me at lunch-time. No lie, she actually kicked the goddang bucket.”
All I could do was nod. Somehow it didn’t quite register. I turned away, glanced down at my hands for a second, then walked home without telling anyone.
In this section of the flashback, Nick breaks the news to O'Brien by way of an idiom. As a euphemism for death, "kicking the bucket" presumably comes from the act of knocking down what one is standing on when hanging oneself. It is worth noting, however, that the idiom is not necessarily meant to suggest that someone has committed suicide. O'Brien would likely find it difficult to register Linda's death regardless of how the news was delivered, but Nick's idiomatic language seems to contribute to his bewilderment.
As O'Brien processess Linda's death, he continues to fixate on her figurative bucket:
I willed her alive. It was a dream, I suppose, or a daydream, but I made it happen. I saw her coming down the middle of Main Street, all alone. It was nearly dark and the street was deserted, no cars or people, and Linda wore a pink dress and shiny black shoes. I remember sitting down on the curb to watch. All her hair had grown back. The scars and stitches were gone. In the dream, if that’s what it was, she was playing a game of some sort, laughing and running up the empty street, kicking a big aluminum water bucket.
Linda's death is the first time O'Brien encounters death. The bucket becomes a symbol of mortality for the boy, as well as a symbol of the incomprehensibility of death and loss. In his dream, he develops a comprehensive scene in which Linda literally kicks a bucket. When he begins to cry, she brings her bucket over to him and asks why he's sad. “Well, God,” he tells her, “you’re dead.”
After this story, O'Brien reflects on why we use figurative language. As he makes evident throughout the collection, idioms and metaphors are not just something we find in literature, but something we often use in everyday life to make upsetting things feel less upsetting. In many of the stories, the men talk about death euphemistically: "In Vietnam, too, we had ways of making the dead seem not quite so dead." When Curt Lemon dies, for example, they talk about his body as wastage rather than a real body. One of O'Brien's takeaways from the war is the significance of word choice: "It’s easier to cope with a kicked bucket than a corpse; if it isn’t human, it doesn’t matter much if it’s dead."
Related Themes:
