Jim Neilson wrote a convincing article about O'brians novel, "The Things They Carried" that further convinces me of the idea that this novel imphasizes an untruth. This essay, at one point, quotes Timothy Lomperis saying that "The facts, in Vietnam, make us all liars". O'Brian seems to be following the whole Postmodern theme that we have been learing about all year. By that, I mean that "The Things They Carried" is almost like a lie. The stories are supposed to be real life experiences yet they did not really happen. True, Vietnam was probably like this but we cannot know for sure. The audience is told a story and expected to believe it. If we believe everything we read, then anything can be true. Although these events may not have actually taken place, we are inclined to think they actually occured. This can also go back to the way we were all raised. We grow up hearing stories and thinking they are true. It is all we ever learned.
Neilson also talks about the way O'Brian writes like he is attempting to exhibit the horrors of the war. By graphically describing every single story, O'Brian is making the event more real for the audience. Its almost like people have to be able to imagine something before they can believe it. Neilson suggests that O'Brian goes back to certain events just to make us realize how awful it was. This creates a sense of hopelessness that can relate the stories to us in a more believeable way. Everybody has felt despair so by telling stories full of it, O'Brian can make us more sympathetic the the characters even if they never literally existed....they did exist in spirit.
I feel like Neilson is not exactly impressed with O'Brian. Its as though he respects his ability to write, yet he feels that O'Brian is very limited in his perception of the war which, in response, limits his audience. O'Brian talks about American hardships, but none of the other side. He almost belittles the Vietnamese suffering by ignoring it. We believe what we read and, according to Neilson, this book does not provide us with the whole story. We are only concerned with the American side and this makes the whole war seem very one-sided. The facts are clearly not present in this novel but we are only concerned with O'Brians side because his illusions are the only things we have read about.
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I definitely agree with your blog!
ReplyDeleteNeilson's article of The Things They Carried was absolutely convincing, as it made me judge differently of the novel. O'Brien is definitely biased when it comes to the war. He views the war only from what he experienced, instead of what happened throughout the entire war. He never takes the hardships and sufferings the Vietnamese into consideration, rather focuses on what he went through. So yeah, pretty inconsiderate on his part.
I like the way you connected O'Brien's novel to things we learn as kids. Although it is represented differently, it still coordinates with one another. For instance, when we were younger, we believed that Santa, the Tooth Fairy, and other fiction characters were real. Although this is partly due to naivety and ignorance, O'Brien presents a war story that we are unsure if it is fiction or nonfiction. He uses many elements of postmodernism to reach this goal.