Relationship between Fiction and Reality Explored in The...

Relationship between Fiction and Reality Explored in The Things They Carried In many respects, Tim OBriens The Things They Carried concerns the relationship between fiction and the narrator. In this novel, OBrien himself is the main character--he is a Vietnam veteran recounting his experiences during the war, as well as a writer who is examining the mechanics behind writing stories. These two aspects of the novel are juxtaposed to produce a work of literature that comments not only upon the war, but also upon the actual art of fiction: the means of storytelling, the purposes behind them, and ultimately the relationship between fiction and reality itself. Through writing about his experiences in Vietnam,†¦show more content†¦This novel is written in this way: characters such as Curt Lemon are killed and then later introduced, or the narrator undercuts what he has previously lead the reader to believe, as in the case of Norman Bowkers suicide. A true war story is distinguishable by the way it never seems to end. Not then, not ever (76). None of the anecdotes in this novel demonstrates complete closure, except perhaps in the case where the character was killed. Even then, however, that particular loss had an impact upon the lives of the people who have survived. Even the end of the novel itself is indefinite and without resolution. Most importantly, In a true war story, if theres a moral at all, its like the thread that makes the cloth. You cant tease it out. You cant extract the meaning without unraveling the deeper meaning (77). Through extracting the true meaning of The Things They Carried, it is impossible to miss the deeper relationship that is being expressed in this novel and the true motivation behind the narrators storytelling: the relationship between stories, reality, and time. As the narrator, OBrien often comments upon the concept of time, such as in the section On the Rainy River: Looking back after twenty years, I sometimes wonder if the events ofShow MoreRelatedA Soldier’s War2706 Words   |  11 Pagesliterature of record . . . [in] contemporary war fiction† (Smith 12). Like Hemingway,1 O’Brien takes on a journalistic approach to his novels. Narrating with his typical method of fragmented stream-of-consciousness, Tim O’Brien recalls his past experiences as a soldier and creates a meta-fiction that illustrates the Vietnam War as a senseless paradox. Fusing physical incident and creative writing, O’Brien establishes his novel in the form of a meta-fiction. The disparity is O’Brien’s first tool in developingRead MoreDiscuss The Article ‘Reinforcing The Myth: Constructing1546 Words   |  7 Pagesmyth: Constructing Australian identity in â€Å"reality TV† ’. 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