“I survived, but it’s not a happy ending. I was a coward. I went to the war,” expresses the narrator in The Things They Carried, thus providing a unique antiwar argument that derives its strength from its perspective. Consistently Tim O’Brien paints the atrocities of the war in a way that an audience with no prior experience can relate. He does this by mixing fiction that paints a clear story with a factual based but cloudy outline.
In the first chapter, O’Brien begins to paint this clear picture by relating factual information that serves to build both his logos and pathos. To start, O’Brien shows the materials that the soldiers carried or “humped”. By doing this he is able to create a logical base that is both methodical and conceptual for the audience. Everything in this sequence is described by weight, and thus the physical tax it all takes on the soldiers in turn being described.
Everything after O’Brien’s foundation strays from structured form. Throughout the novel O’Brien appeals to emotions through randomized deaths and spur-of-the-moment decisions. O’Brien explores fictionalized reactions to extreme events that portray elements of each character as an individual, but collectively as they are related to the war. O’Brien’s exploration incorporates a wide variety of elements ranging from the death of a friend to the killing of an enemy, a fantasized relationship to a complex breakup.
Ultimately, we as readers are not to be able to decipher between fact and fiction. O’Brien even gives us insight to this. He wants us to understand rather that he is attempting to provide an understanding; an understanding that the war is wrong.
No comments:
Post a Comment