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The things they carried 3 critical essay
The things they carried argument essay
The things they carried 3 critical essay
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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.
His stories are images of his own experiences in the war, as he is the narrator and main character in most of the stories. Some of his points of view are how war is an ambiguous thing and how it changes people. For instance, in “How to tell a true war story” the author reflects on the feelings of being alive after a fight, proposing that war is hell but also many other things. In O’Brien’s words “You feel an intense, out-of-the-skin awareness of your living self- your truest self, the human being you want to be and then become by the force of wanting it.
According to O’Brien, a true war story often can’t be told and that factual truth is often blurred by the emotional truth as told by the storyteller. With this, the line between reality and fiction is often has to be determined by the reader. Defined reality is what can be proven, while perceived reality is what is believed to have happened. In The Things they Carried, O’Brien is seen changing the truth in order to provide the reader a sense of the emotions of war, not a factual account of
But there are a few things the O’Brien validates for the reader. He did fight in the Vietnam War. Several different places in the book show this. He received his draft letter on June 17, 1968. He responded in not the normal way, but he ran away to the Canadian border where he spent six
O’Brien used metafiction as a way to challenge the reader's mind to unravel a deeper connection between truth and reality and all the stories hidden in between. O’Brien begins to write about his journey through the Vietnam War and the unthinkable experiences. He tells war stories that we can only think are true but are never quite sure. O’Brien writes: “in any war
“A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth” (83). The theme of “happening-truth” versus “story-truth” is a constant opposition Tim O’Brien uses to convey his “true war story” to his audience. Many times in the book The Things They Carried, O’Brien lies to the reader to attempt to give the reader realistic events, so they can relate to the emotions O’Brien felt during the Vietnam war. O’Brien makes it clear in the chapter “Field Trip” that a person who has not been to war cannot comprehend what it was like. He uses a fictional character, Kathleen, to be a stand in for the reader; she is innocent and free from the burden of serving in wartime.
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.
Using this character he shows in fiction what he does in his real life, which is to write stories for people to understand. In an interview with Jeffrey Brown from PBS Newshour, O’Brien explains how fiction can tell the truth: For me, the way to approach a subject such as Vietnam is through storytelling. It’s one thing to watch a newscast or read a newspaper or a magazine article, where things are fairly abstract. In fact, the word war itself has a kind of glazing abstraction to it that conjures up bombs and bullets and so on, whereas my goal is to try to, so much as I can, capture the heart and the stomach and the back of the throat of readers who can lie in bed at night and participate in a story.
The novel The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien uses many effective rhetorical strategies throughout. In the chapter On the Rainy River, Tim O’Brien tells the audience a story he has never told anybody. Not even his parents, siblings or wife. He narrates the events and emotions that he experienced after receiving a war draft notice during the summer of 1968. O’Brien is ashamed about how he dealt with the notice and he feels as though he is “too good” to go to war.
O’Brien does not try to justify his actions, but makes up a life story that is very similar to his own to try to familiarize with the dead Viet Cong soldier he stumbles upon in the story “The Man I Killed”. The story O’Brien makes up highlights the dead soldier's life. Going from being teased for his women-like appearance at school and faking his excitement of fighting and being patriotic in front of his father and uncles. O’Brien continues to make up stories about the young Viet Cong soldier, how he went to continue his passion in math, going to study in Saigon and how he met this girl that liked him for his bony legs and small wrists. The way that O’Brien handles guilt after the war shows his own problems that arose during the war.
Rather, the significance of O’Brien’s work is his utilization of a metafictional novel as a representative vehicle for the Vietnam War. Within The Things They Carried
O’Brien presents a story in which he kills an innocent Vietnamese man walking through the woods. He describes the guilt and remorse he feels for his actions. He references this story several times throughout the book. Around the third time he admits that the guy he specifically described was not real, and that in fact he never killed anyone in the war, but the fact that he witnessed so many deaths put him at fault. “I remember his face, which was not a pretty face because his jaw was in his throat, and I remember feeling the burden of responsibility and grief.
Surrealism Surrealism is the use of non rational imagery to give insight to the book’s characters’ subconscious thoughts. The Things They Carried specifically references surrealism in “How to Tell a True War Story” and how it is such a big factor in war stories. It is what gives them such unrealistic sounding images and scenes but as Tim O’Brien puts it, “represents the hard and exact truth as it seemed”(68). Surrealism is apparent in many if not all chapters of the story.
Ever since the first war occurred in the world, written records by soldiers or people involved have been circulated and read. In the letters or stories, they include harsh conditions, homesickness, or desperation. Tim O’Brien uses limited third person in The Things They Carried while Stephen Crane uses dialogue in The Open Boat to both create an effect of desperation during war for soldiers.
He fought a war in Vietnam that he knew nothing about, all he knew was that, “Certain blood was being shed for uncertain reasons” (38). He realized that he put his life on the line for a war that is surrounded in controversy and questions. Through reading The Things They Carried, it was easy to feel connected to the characters; to feel their sorrow, confusion, and pain. O’Briens ability to make his readers feel as though they are actually there in the war zones with him is a unique ability that not every author possess.
