But the thing about remembering is that you don't forget. You take your material where you find it, which is in your life, at the intersection of past and present. The memory-traffic feeds into a rotary up on your head, where it goes in circles for a while, then pretty soon imagination flows in and the

traffic merges and shoots off down a thousand different streets. As a writer, all you can do is pick a street and go for the ride, putting things down as they come at you. That's the real obsession. All those stories.

As good times sometimes must end, as do bad times. As such, war stories will not always  be horrible. They can be the day, the soldier received a letter from family, phone call from home, or even something as simple as the sunset over a valley. It's the little things that make stories come alive. As your imagination is based upon your life, if you had only good memories/stories in your life, there wouldn't be a moral or any character being built.

By changing the topic (more or less), Tim O'Brien helped give texture and substance to the story, helping the reader understand that they were just like us. They were young men put in an environment that expected them to react quickly to the abrupt change. When they weren't being soldiers fighting for their life, they had a chance to relax, care for a puppy, and learn how to rain dance among other things.

As Tim O'Brien wrote about the summer he received his draft notice, he wrote words that described why he left, his feelings, and the reason for his return. The shame of not wanting "people to think badly of me. Not my parents, not my brother and sister, not even the folks down at the Gobbler Cafe." I understand that shame, not in that context, but the shame or fear of being the cause of others' downfall or disgrace.

In a way, I think telling stories about the war because O'Brien's obsession as a way of both punishment and to remember his past. I think his war stories are his way of punishing himself for being a coward to go in the first place, and that he even thought about bailing to Canada. The war stories remind of how he has changed and in a way his pre-war life is that of another person, "a coward" that went to war.