Last class
we were told that it was revealed in an interview with Tim O’Brien that 90% or
more of the material in The Things They
Carried was invented and that 90% or more about the character of Tim
O’Brien was made up. I was taken by surprise, and immediately realized that Tim
O’Brien had tricked me. Was this his goal? Did he aim to make me believe that
the events he spoke about in so much detail, with so much emotion, really
happened? Each story vividly portrayed the front-line in Vietnam with sensitivity to both the
emotional and physical realities of war. I had known, of course, that this was
a work of fiction, but nevertheless, a part of me still believed that these
stories were rooted in truth. As I read the book, I would think to myself,
“That had to have happened to him” because I felt sincere emotion for the
characters.
Why did Tim
O’Brien essentially trick his readers? Why did he write this story in such a
careful way that would lead us to believe that these events truly happened to
him, and that the character of Tim O’Brien is a representation of himself? The
character of Tim O’Brien is no more than a construct of the author. This is
seemingly a war story; we are mislead into thinking that this is an actual
story about Vietnam, a true account of the war itself. However, this story is
simply set in Vietnam, and is nothing more than the author coming to terms with
his memories of the war. He is using the power of storytelling to convince his
readers that the stories that make up this book are true, when really most of
them have come straight from his imagination. This leaves me wondering about Tim
O’Brien’s intentions when he was writing this book. Did he use it as a means of
coping? Did he seek to finally talk about the traumatic events of the war, even
though it was in an indirect way? Did he want to preserve his innocence before the
war? I don’t think there is a definite answer. Whatever he aimed to do, O’Brien
succeeded in tricking me to believe that these lies he composed were the truth
about the war in Vietnam.
I definitely think there's a purpose in O'Brien "tricking" his readers into believing that the stories in this book are based off events that really happened to him. He deliberately writes the novel that way so that he can get sincere emotion from his readers, which you mentioned you felt. If the stories were less realistic, or if O'Brien said from the beginning that he just made all of them up, they probably wouldn't bring out those same emotions in the readers. Because I believed the stories were mostly real, I felt an emotional connection to the stories and characters that I don't feel with most fiction books.
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