29 Contemporary Literature, 1970 to Present
An example of the Postmodernist impulse at work in The Things They Carried
begins even before the stories proper: the dedication reads, “This book is lovingly
dedicated to the men of Alpha Company, and in particular to Jimmy Cross, Nor-
man Bowker, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Henry Dobbins, and Kiowa.” These
names are also those of the main characters in most of the stories, leading readers
to feel that they are meeting in the fiction the people with whom O’Brien served
in Vietnam. The copyright page, however, carries the notice: “This is a work of
fiction. Except for a few details regarding the author’s own life, all the incidents,
names, and characters are imaginary.” The Things They Carried revels in Postmod-
ernist play with its boundary-blurring strategies. Yet, the Postmodern also mirrors
O’Brien’s beliefs about the negative consequences of young men being sent to
war. The facts about what it was like to be a young, scared boy at war in a foreign
country provide only a shadow of the truth. But a fictional story comes much
closer to conveying a sense of the emotional truth about war.
O’Brien followed The Things They Carried with In the Lake of the Woods
(1994). Again Postmodernist in its approach, it is the story of John Woods, a
politician who has kept hidden his involvement in the My Lai Massacre for years.
It was named best novel of the year by Time magazine and received the James
Fenimore Cooper Prize from the Society of American Historians. Tomcat in Love
(1998) is the story of a promiscuous Vietnam veteran, and July, July (2002) relates
the experiences of several characters from the Vietnam era at their thirtieth col-
lege class reunion.
Tim O’Brien holds the Roy F. and Joann Mitte Endowed Chair in Creative
Writing at Texas State University—San Marcos. He maintains an active and
helpful website at <www.illyria.com/tobhp.html> [accessed 6 December 2009]
with many links to interviews, reviews, and critical sources. Students are encour-
aged to read fiction and nonfiction about the war by other writers to gain perspec-
tive on O’Brien’s literary accomplishment. Ronald Baughman’s American Writers
of the Vietnam War (Detroit: Bruccoli Clark Layman/Gale, 1991), volume 8 in
the Dictionary of Literary Biography Documentary Series, treats O’Brien along with
four other war writers, including primary and secondary sources and a generous
helping of illustrations. Reporting Vietnam: American Journalism, 1959-1975 (New
York: Library of America, 1998) is an invaluable source for placing O’Brien’s fic-
tion in context.
TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION AND RESEARCH
- Many critics and readers have remarked that The Things They Carried is at
least as much about the process of writing as it is about serving in Vietnam.
Thus students interested in Postmodernism might wish to explore the role of
metafiction and self-reflexivity in The Things They Carried. What does the text
have to say about the process of writing? Do the metafictional aspects of the
text heighten the dramatizations of soldiers’ lives in Vietnam, or do they draw
energy and attention away? The articles by Catherine Calloway, Clara Juncker,
Robin Silbergleid, and John H. Timmerman all offer useful perspectives on
Postmodern techniques and metafiction in this book.