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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
A 5 page analysis of Tim O'Brien's novel of the Vietnam War—"The Things They Carried." The writer argues that the unusual structure of this novel blurs the line between fiction and reality in order to demonstrate how the war experience affected the soldiers involved. No additional sources cited.
Page Count:
5 pages (~225 words per page)
File: KE9_99obttca.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
cloud the line between fiction and reality. The protagonist in this novel is also named "Tim OBrien;" and on the dedication page to the men of "Alpha Company," he mentions
names of men who are also mentioned within the novel. As historian Loren Baritz once pointed out, before the US could become involved on a military level in defending the
South Vietnamese, the US first had to "invent" the issues that were at stake. In many ways, the Vietnam War was a work of fiction, in and of itself. The
US became involved in Vietnam to preserve "democracy" in a country where democratic institutions simply did not exist. The political issues that provided US motivation had to be made clear
to the Vietnamese people through the use of brute force. The reality of the Vietnam War was that young men who were sent to fight in Indochina had little or
no conception of what they were fighting for or about. Everything about the war was uncertain. You couldnt even tell who the enemy was most of the time. This aspect
of the war is highlighted in one scene where OBrien describes how two men would always dig a foxhole around twilight, break out a checker board and play checkers till
dark. He comments on how reassuring that game was in which the rules were known and observable. The unusual structure of OBriens book is designed to recreate and convey
what this total lack of certainty felt like from the soldiers perspective. He does this by blurring the line between fact and fiction the reader isnt sure what is true.
Stories about specific soldiers are told first one way and then a few pages later, told a different way. Are all the perspectives offered on certain story "lines" true? Or,
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