The View of the Implied Author and the Goal of the Author

What impressed me most about “The Things They Carried” was Tim O’Brien’s use of “implied author” versus “author”. From the very beginning, O’Brien explicitly states that this novel was “a work of fiction,” and it was exactly what I expected when I first started reading this book.

In the first chapter, everything was in third person omniscient, and I was able to get a sense of how many characters there will be and their characteristics. However, I was really surprised when the point of view shifted to first person in the second chapter and never specified who “me” was. When I finally figured out that the implied author was Tim O’Brien, it made me do a double take to find out whether this book was truly a fiction book or really non-fiction. I found that the novel is declared as a fictional book, but has a lot of O’Brien’s (the author) history within it.

Finding that out made me more proactive to determine whether this novel could be based on true stories, but was considered fiction in order for O’Brien to keep the identity of his platoon members confidential. It wasn’t until later that I realized his purpose in inserting himself into the story. The Tim O’Brien in the novel was the implied author. Although most of his experiences are consistent with Tim O’Brien the author, ultimately, the implied author expresses the feelings about the war, which the author could not do. The implied author allowed for the author to not have war nightmares that many veterans suffered through, because the implied author told all about the war, and served as the author’s catharsis.

There is a fine line between the implied author and author, just as there is a fine line between fiction and non-fiction in the novel. There are points where I struggle to figure out if the war story was true, until I realized that it didn’t matter if the war story were true, because they served O’Brien’s purpose.

“What stories can do, I guess, is make things present” (180).

I believe that was the goal of O’Brien’s writing. It was his way of letting the world know about war. How he saw the war, allowed others to see the war, and allow for catharsis.