This is shown throughout the book through the exchange of stories among soldiers. Once O’Brien properly conveys the negative affects of lack of conversation about war upon returning soldiers, it becomes clear that he displayed that message in order to show the importance of sharing war stories. Norman’s struggle with this fact shows the importance of facing it. This story shows the avoidance of the topic of war in U.S. society, and Norman as a raumatized American soldier returning home to no place in the world and nobody to talk to about his experiences. When it comes to facing serious topics, such as what goes on in Vietnam, nobody wants to hear it. This quote demonstrates Norman’s feelings that there was nobody he could talk to about the war: in his mind, his town “did not care to know.” The town is described as very organized and well-run a town with all hustle and bustle, but with no emotion. It did not know shit about shit, and did not care to know” (O’Brien 137). ‘How’d you like to hear about the war?’ he might have asked, but the place could only blink and shrug…The taxes got paid and the votes got counted…It was a brisk, polite town. “The town could not talk, and would not listen. In this story, O’Brien was trying to show soldiers’ and society’s aversion to talking about the tragedies of war, and the negative effects this has upon Bowker’s character. It is expressed that Norman does not want to talk to his loved ones about the war because, while he can predict the exact reactions he would instigate, he knows that nobody will understand anything shares. Norman feels that he no longer belongs, and no longer has a place in the world. It is clear to the reader that Norman feels that he has changed, and sees the town in a whole new light as a familiar yet foreign place. He drives around his hometown, thinking about how everything seems exactly the same. Throughout the story, the reader hears Norman’s thoughts as he an considers telling his father, family, or old girlfriend about his experiences in Vietnam. However, I found that the story that most displayed the difficulty of communication about war was “Speaking of Courage,” a story about Norman Bowker, a soldier returning home after years at war in Vietnam. At the beginning of “On the Rainy River,” O’Brien expresses extreme shame for the story he proceeds to tell, saying he has never told anyone before. women back home will “never understand any of this, not in a million years” (O’Brien 108), a soldier’s expression of why he would never attempt to explain it to one. In “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong,” it is mentioned how U.S. Throughout every story in the novel, it is shown how difficult it is for the soldiers to talk about their war experiences. The technique allows the reader to participate actively and consciously, in the shaping and constructing of the plot. Through the emphasis on the nature of existence rather than its reason or belief, metafiction draws attention to the paradoxes that prevail in humanity: individual freedom at the cost of alienation, technological progress at the cost of dehumanization, and several such issues that seem to have culminated in a monotonous and hopeless existence in the Postmodern world. To start, metafiction is regarded as one of the core techniques that highlights the importance of reader engagement in postmodern literature. The metafiction in this novel is used primarily to convey this importance. Tim O’Brien wrote The Things They Carried to address the fact that nobody wants to talk about war, but that, it still must be discussed in order to acknowledge the horrors that go on everyday and to help soldiers to heal. The use of metafiction throughout the book helps O’Brien to convey these messages. The passing of war stories from soldier to soldier suggests that as taboo of a subject as it is, talking about war is important not only to educate others but to heal those traumatized by it. Critics and readers alike ask: what was O’Brien’s goal when he wrote this novel? What message was he trying to convey? Through several stories such as “Speaking of Courage,” O’Brien makes a statement about the fact that people are sensitive to the topic of war. The Things They Carried manages to convey the feelings associated with being in war without telling the reader what to feel. In his masterpiece The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien writes a collection of heartbreaking, witty, unbelievable stories about a group of young American soldiers trudging through the war against Vietnam.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |