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Ideologies In The Things They Carried, By Tim O Brien

1149 Words5 Pages

When referring to a narrative fiction, an ideology can be described as a dominant set of attitudes, values and beliefs informing the reader. The novel The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien is a collection of interrelated short stories that challenge many principal ideologies relating to a culture, place or time. Ideologies are formed by a dominant social class and represent an abstract meaning for a cultural, political and societal principle. O’Brien presents the reader with a set of beliefs from the time period, however he challenges these ideologies, and presents them in a new light. O’Brien challenges the principal ideology about the importance of the USA’s involvement in the Vietnam War and its necessity to resolve the threat of communism. …show more content…

The idea is constructed and told partly from O’Brien as a soldier, reliving stories from his experience in Vietnam, and partly from his manipulation as a storyteller, and his ability to deliberately construct a view about an event. There is a dominant thought that stories about a war time, are written from facts and personal experiences, exploring the realities about war and constructing a truthful image for the readers. However O’Brien contradicts this argument, by blurring the distinction between fact and fiction. He describes how to “generalise about war is like generalising about peace. Almost everything is true” yet “almost nothing is true.” O’Brien’s role as a storyteller illustrated how he has the power to shape the readers experiences and opinions through his deliberate form of writing. His purpose in combining fact and fiction in the story is to illustrate that the unbiased truth about a war story is less significant than the act of storytelling. “In any war story, but especially a true one, its difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen.” Ultimately the prevailing ideology that all war stories are constructed to the objective truth is challenged in ‘How to tell a true war story’ as O’Brien reveals the importance of storytelling and the impact it can play on the ideas

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Although the soldier he killed was an enemy soldier, instead of vilifying him he was able to humanize the man. O’Brien was able to describe the physical appearance of the soldier and imagine her life before war. The author was able to portray an emotional connection and made the line between friend and enemy almost vanish. This was able to reveal the natural beauty of shared humanity even in the context of war’s horror. O’Brien is able to find the beauty in the midst of this tragic and horrible event.

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Readers, especially those reading historical fiction, always crave to find believable stories and realistic characters. Tim O’Brien gives them this in “The Things They Carried.” Like war, people and their stories are often complex. This novel is a collection stories that include these complex characters and their in depth stories, both of which are essential when telling stories of the Vietnam War. Using techniques common to postmodern writers, literary techniques, and a collection of emotional truths, O’Brien helps readers understand a wide perspective from the war, which ultimately makes the fictional stories he tells more believable.

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