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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
An 11-page paper detailing the pattern of confusing reality and fantasy in the works of Tim O’Brien. Discusses his deliberate attempt to confuse the reader as to what is real and fictional, with the intent of presenting a "higher" truth by making the reader feel viscerally what it was like in Vietnam, and to illustrate the illusory nature of truth in the real world. Lists 15 sources.
Page Count:
11 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_khwob.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
But one pattern emerges throughout most of his work. He will often start by insisting that the stories are not true, are made up and didnt actually happen. Then he
(or another character) will begin the story, get immersed in it, and insist on its truth, or at least tell it as if it were absolutely true and then, in
the same breath, insist that it is fiction. He will state a truth, take it back, restate it, and in the end insist that all of it is "true," regardless
of whether it actually happened or not, or even that whether it really happened is irrelevant to the truth of the story. This obfuscation of reality is not accidental; in
fact, it is essential to OBriens goal in his storytelling. Tim OBrien, an antiwar activist, was drafted after college and sent to Vietnam, where he experienced the alienation, the dichotomy
between what he had thought of as morality and what he was seeing. He saw cherished concepts like good and evil, heroism and cowardice, right and wrong, morality and despotism,
horror and beauty, terror and elation, all merge, intertwine, change places and switch back again, all until it was difficult to tell what was real and what was fantasy, and
who and what one was (Lee, 1995). In that, he wasnt unique. Thousands of Vietnam veterans experienced it, and dozens of writers have tried to put those feelings into words
and images that can convey how they felt and feel to an unknowing, and often disbelieving and unsympathetic, audience (Myers, 1998]. What sets OBrien apart, however, is his approach to
that task (Chen, 1998). Most other writers of the genre reach back into their experiences of the conflict to tell first-person, horrific,
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