The 1960’s, a decade of extreme rebellion, change, and civil unrest. The Vietnam War, a war no one wanted to have or be a part of. This was a time of change for America and Tim O’Brien was right in the middle of it. “Someone writing about leaving one's country, and the horrors of that: the dislocations, the lingering sense of moral failure, or moral rectitude, which can also haunt you,” O’Brien was a one of the many writers of the Postmodernist movement (O’Brien 31). Postmodernism started after the end of World War II and continues to our present day (Postmodernism 1). It was a movement of skepticism and truly seeing reality for what it is in our world. If there were new breakthroughs in science or social life writers would question its origin and if it was really there (Postmodernism 2-3). When adding these accounts together, Tim O’Brien’s mind was molded into the dark sided, realistic approach on life during the Vietnam War.
Tim O’Brien was drafted into the Vietnam War in the early 1960’s, at the beginning of the war. He saw most of the heavy combat of the war so when he came back and was going to college he was a harden individual. Much of his writing discusses the dark side of the human mind and reality of life (Mote 1). If he wasn’t in Vietnam, most of his writing would be much different than it is today, the writing would be about depression more than anything. The Vietnam War is the big factor as to why he started writing, it is what pushed him most (O’Brien 31). Vietnam played a huge role in his work, he would write entire novels around it using a mixture of real life events with fictional characters making his stories difficult to describe as reality or just something made up. Besides actual events in O’Brien’s life, h...
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...use it to make an example for future generations to follow? Works Cited
O’Brien, Tim, and Jonathan D’Amore.” Every Question Leads to the next: An Interview with Tim O’Brien.” Carolina Quarterly 58.2 (Spring 2007): Pages 31-99. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Ed. Jelena O. Krstovic. Vol. 123. Detroit:Gale, 2009. Literature Resource Center. Web. 6 May 2014.
“PostModernism.” Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Encyclopedia Britannica Inc., 2014. Web .07 May 2014. .
Steinglass, Matt.”Reading Tim O’Brien in Hanoi.” The New York Times Book Review 4 Apr.2010: 27(L). Literature Resource Center. Web May 11 2014.
Mote, Dave. "Tim O’Brien." Contemporary Popular Writers. 1997. Web. 6 May 2014.
Zins, Daniel L. "Imagining The Real: The Fiction of Tim O’Brien." Literature Resource Center. Gale, 1986. Web. 6 May 2014.
They were essential in showing the key parts in O’Brien’s life that lead to the turning points which lead to the creation of this novel and his ability to be at peace with what had happened in Vietnam. He finally accepted what had happened and embraced it instead of avoiding it. Works Cited Novel O'Brien, Tim.
Before O’Brien was drafted into the army, he had an all American childhood. As talked about “His mother was an elementary school teacher, his father an insurance salesman and sailor in World War II” (O’Brien). He spent his tour of duty from 1969 to 1970 as a foot soldier. He was sent home when he got hit with a shrapnel in a grenade attack. O’Brien says as the narrator, “As a fiction writer, I do not write just about the world we live in, but I also write about the world we ought to live in, and could, which is a world of imagination.” (O’Brien)
Tim O'Brien, a Vietnam war vet, had similar experiences as the soldier above. Even though O'Brien didn't die, the war still took away his life because a part of him will never be the same. Even in 1995, almost thirty years after the war, O'Brien wrote, "Last night suicide was on my mind. Not whether, but how. Tonight it will be on my mind again... I sit in my underwear at this unblinking fool of a computer and try to wrap words around a few horrid truths" (Vietnam 560). 1 think that O'Brien is still suffering from what he experienced in Vietnam and he uses his writing to help him deal with his conflicts. In order to deal with war or other traumatic experiences, you sometimes just have to relive the experiences over and over. This is what O'Brien does with his writing; he expresses his emotional truths even if it means he has to change the facts of the literal truth.
“Short Stories." Short Story Criticism. Ed. Jelena Krstovic. Vol. 127. Detroit: Gale, Cengage Learning, 2010. 125-388. Literature Criticism Online. Gale. VALE - Mercer County Community College. 28 February 2014
The impact of the Vietnam War upon the soldiers who fought there was huge. The experience forever changed how they would think and act for the rest of their lives. One of the main reasons for this was there was little to no understanding by the soldiers as to why they were fighting this war. They felt they were killing innocent people, farmers, poor hard working people, women, and children were among their victims. Many of the returning soldiers could not fall back in to their old life styles. First they felt guilt for surviving many of their brothers in arms. Second they were haunted by the atrocities of war. Some soldiers could not go back to the mental state of peacetime. Then there were soldiers Tim O’Brien meant while in the war that he wrote the book “The Things They Carried,” that showed how important the role of story telling was to soldiers. The role of stories was important because it gave them an outlet and that outlet was needed both inside and outside the war in order to keep their metal state in check.
O’Brien takes the reader through a series of stories to help reveal the reality of the Vietnam War. Most literally, the “things” that the men carried defined their character. These things were both physical and mental. Every death that the men faced along the way left them another burden to carry, outweighing any heaviness their equipment would ever bear. O’Brien snakes through this novel trying to convey that true stories don’t necessarily come with happy endings. True stories are a raw account of truth and fiction, and the overall purpose is to distinguish between the two. O’Brien wants the reader to understand that if it matters to the moral of the story, it is real and important. He is very successful in achieving this reaction. By combining the truth with exaggeration, much thought must be put into deciding what’s important and gives reason as to why the story is actually being told. The larger theme is defining one’s real perception of truth. Something can have happened and yet not be considered true if the outcome didn’t have in depth meaning to the
Robinson, Daniel. "Getting It Right: The Short Fiction of Tim O'Brien." Studies in Contemporary Fiction. 40.3 (1999): 257. Expanded Academic ASAP.
Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Ed. Joseph Palmisano. Vol.
Tim O'Brien is confused about the Vietnam War. He is getting drafted into it, but is also protesting it. He gets to boot camp and finds it very difficult to know that he is going off to a country far away from home and fighting a war that he didn't believe was morally right. Before O'Brien gets to Vietnam he visits a military Chaplin about his problem with the war. "O'Brien I am really surprised to hear this. You're a good kid but you are betraying you country when you say these things"(60). This says a lot about O'Brien's views on the Vietnam War. In the reading of the book, If I Die in a Combat Zone, Tim O'Brien explains his struggles in boot camp and when he is a foot soldier in Vietnam.
Rather, the stories are short and straight to the point in order to avoid glorifying them so that content of the story maintains its relevancy to the experience that the soldiers had in the Vietnam war. He is found constantly blending fact and fiction throughout the book in hopes of exaggerating the fact that often the validity of a war story is much less relevant than the act of expressing a point or moral. Additionally, its made clear that the author’s goal is not to compose a novel solely about the history of the Vietnam War, but instead to depict how discussing war experiences serves in the establishment, or lack thereof, of bonds between a soldier and the audience he/she is speaking to. He believes that stories contain a great deal of power, since they allow people to confront the past together and share otherwise unknowable experiences. Overall, Tim O’Brien’s writing magnifies his belief that the hard facts surrounding an event are less important than the overbearing truths the event serves to reveal, and how it, in turn, affected the fifty-eight thousand killed, two thousand captured, and three hundred fifty thousand maimed and wounded
Throughout the novel, Tim O’Brien illustrates the extreme changes that the soldiers went through. Tim O’Brien makes it apparent that although Vietnam stole the life of millions through the death, but also through the part of the person that died in the war. For Tim O’Brien, Rat Kiley, Mary Anne and Norman Bowker, Vietnam altered their being and changed what the world knew them as, into what the world could not understand.
Gaining historical background helps sharpen a student’s understanding of the Vietnam War, which ameliorates their ability to properly interpret the story. Larry Berman and Jason Newman, author of “The Vietnam War and Its Impact,” wrote about the history of the Vietnam War and how America got involved, stating “… the commitment of marines in March 1965, and the deployment of other troops all before June 1965” (Berman and Newman) was when America started to get involved as a permanent party in the war. Thus, it creates a sense of reality in O’Brien’s story. In addition, the Vietnam war “produced libraries full of memoirs, novels, and poetry” (The Vietnam War and American Popular Culture) by former veterans, such as O’Brien. Like O’Brien, these former veterans have written their stories in the hopes of making sense and coming to terms with their experiences to themselves and to others.
(Sept. 1976): 35-39. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Ed. Carol T. Gaffke. Vol. 26. Detroit:
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" Studies in Short Fiction 33.2 (Spring 1996): 171-184. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Ed. Joseph Palmisano.