O’Brien’s novel is untraditional in a second narrative sense as well, due in part to the non-linear presentation of the novel’s action. O’Brien does not maintain temporal continuity; he jumps from the past to the present and then to the distant past and then back to the present. In a way, this constant memory shifting leads the reader down a path of memory similar to O’Brien’s. In other words, O’Brien forces an experience of recollections leading to other memories and new insights on his reader, creating an emotional response to the novel in the reader. This path of memory — which is congruent to O’Brien’s own — more actively involves the reader in a constant dialogic interplay with the novel. For readers, as for O’Brien, certain events and details recall the details and events of other stories. By using a narrative technique that constantly generates new contexts in which to revisit stories, such as that when O’Brien recalls Linda when contemplating a dead body he sees in Vietnam, he creates new meanings through shifting juxtapositions.