Tim O’Brien’s use of various techniques of metafiction and postmodernism shows his readers the truth or his truth surrounding the Vietnam war and how it affects the mind of veterans.
Firstly, the author uses historiographic metafiction by involving himself in the novel through making the main character bear his name. The experiences of Tim O’Brien, the character, make the reader inference if the real Tim O’Brien channelled his own experiences through this autobiography of the character Tim O’Brien. The character Tim O’Brien retells stories and events he recalls from his time during the war but since his memories a suppressed at times or incomplete it perhaps mirrors the memories of the real O’Brien trying to incorporate his own experience but having trouble recalling specific traumatic events.
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The amount of fragmentation in the novel depicts the elements of typical postmodern literature. In the book there is no steady timeline and the stories told vary from three time periods: before the war, during the war and after the war. He employs time-fragmentation to symbolize the nonlinear track of memories, especially those of traumatized war veterans, and how jumbled they can be. It can also be argued that O’Brien did this to symbolize the era itself, the time round the Vietnam War was filled with confusion. The Anti-War Movement clashed with the pro-war people, other simultaneous movements going on such as the Civil Rights movement and the Second Wave Feminist movement. Another idea, through the confusing storyline, it represents the life of soldiers entering and exiting the war. Many soldiers when they came back home did not know of the animosity towards veterans and the political turmoil the country was in; they were