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Metafiction In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

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In the book The Things They Carried, the author, Tim O’Brien, uses many literary methods, including metafiction. Metafiction is while an author is writing a story, he or she breaks the fourth wall in order to make the audience feel like they are involved. It brings reality to a fictional story by speaking to the audience about what is going on, and it makes the audience forget that what they are experiencing isn’t real. Metafiction blurs the line between fiction and reality. Tim O’Brien uses many literary devices in this book, including symbolism, imagery, setting, a narrator point of view, metafiction, and a tone. Metafiction really takes these devices and hits the nail on the head during this novel. In this story, Tim O’Brien is the author,
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There are numerous examples of metafiction in The Things They Carried; many are clear, and some are harder to notice at first glance. In the text, author Tim O’Brien uses a metafictional writing style to vividly illustrate what emotions and thoughts went through the minds of the soldiers fighting in Vietnam, including himself. It is unclear whether or not some of the stories he tells in the text actually happened, but there is no doubt that they are paramount to the underlying objective of O’Brien’s writing style: to use realistic scenarios that may not have actually happened, to make whatever changes necessary to the story to get his point across. Tim O’Brien uses metafiction to obscure the line between truth and fiction by manipulating details that trigger certain emotions to influence the reader. Metafiction allows writers like Tim O’Brien to manipulate what is held to be truth, and fabricate certain details in an attempt to enhance or reinforce the meaning of a story.

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