Essay The Things They Carried

1. Storytelling: Fact or Fiction

Like most of the literature of the Vietnam war, ''The Things They Carried'' is shaped by the personal combat experience of the author. O'Brien is adamant, however, that the fiction not be mistaken for factual accounts of events. In an interview with Michael Coffey of Publishers Weekly soon after the book was published, O'Brien claims: ‘‘My own experience has virtually nothing to do with the content of the book.’’ Indeed the title page of the book announces it as ''a work of fiction.'' The book is dedicated, however, ''to the men of Alpha Company, and in particular to Jimmy Cross, Norman Bowker, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Henry Dobbins, and Kiowa." O'Brien himself was an infantryman in Alpha Company and was stationed in the Quang Ngai province in 1969-70. When asked about this device in an interview with Martin Narparsteck in Contemporary Literature, O'Brien explains: "What I'm saying is that even with that nonfiction-sounding element in the story, everything in the story is fiction, beginning to end. To classify different elements of the story as fact or fiction seems to me artificial. Literature should be looked at not for its literal truth but for its emotional qualities. What matters in literature, I think, are the pretty simple things--whether it moves me or not. Whether it feels true. The actual literal truth should be superfluous."

Discuss the implications of "story truth" (fiction) versus "happening truth" (nonfiction/history) using examples from your reading.  What is the significance of the following quote in terms of O'Brien's purpose as a writer of this novel and how he achieves this end using metafiction techniques and a reliance on story-truth?

pg. 236

      "The human life is all one thing, like a blade tracing loops on ice: a little kid, a twenty-three-year-old infantry sergeant, a middle-aged writer knowing guilt and sorrow.

      And as a writer now, I want to save Linda's life.  Not her body--her life.

      She died, of course.  Nine years old and she died.  It was a brain tumor.  She lived through the summer and into the first part of September, and then she was dead.

      But in a story I can steal her soul.  I can revive, at least briefly, that which is absolute and unchanging.  In a story, miracles can happen.  Linda can smile and sit up.  She can reach out, touch my wrist, and say, 'Timmy, stop crying.'"

Test on Thursday/Field Trip to MCC

Continue to work on PROJECTS

Field trip to MCC

Select book for PROJECT

TEST on Things They Carried on Thursday

The Things They Carried--Finish Book/TEST Thursday

AGENDA:

READING:

Now that you've read to pg. 219, please post a group response to the questions in the previous post.

Please finish the book for Thursday.  There will be an essay style test on the book.  Think about "story truth" versus "happening truth" in regard to the writing and the major themes of the book.  What does O'Brien say about the power of stories to heal?  How does the end of the book put the war story into a different context?

WRITING:

Begin work on your Marking Period 4 project.  You can write whatever you'd like--essays, poems (new poetry cycles?), stories, scripts, journal entries about the books we will choose next week, etc.
It's up to you...too much independence and choice?  Think, too, about revising earlier work from this year.

Book choices (Choose 1 for now--check out the links on the side of this blog):

The Hours by Michael Cunningham:

The Hours is a 1998 novel written by Michael Cunningham. It won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the 1999 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, and was later made into an Oscar-winning 2002 movie of the same name starring Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore.

The book concerns three generations of women affected by a Virginia Woolf novel.

The first is Woolf herself writing Mrs. Dalloway in 1923 and struggling with her own mental illness. The second is Mrs. Brown, wife of a World War II veteran, who is reading Mrs. Dalloway in 1949 as she plans her husband's birthday party. The third is Clarissa Vaughan, a bisexual woman, who plans a party in 2001 to celebrate a major literary award received by her good friend and former lover, the poet Richard, who is dying of an AIDS-related illness.

The situations of all three characters mirror situations experienced by Woolf's Clarissa Dalloway in Mrs. Dalloway, with Clarissa Vaughan being a very literal modern-day version of Woolf's character. Like Mrs. Dalloway, Clarissa Vaughan goes on a journey to buy flowers while reflecting on the minutiae of the day around her and later prepares to throw a party. Clarissa Dalloway and Clarissa Vaughan also both reflect on their histories and past loves in relation to their current lives, which they both perceive as trivial. A number of other characters in Clarissa Vaughan's story also parallel characters in Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway.

Cunningham's novel also mirrors Mrs. Dalloway's stream-of-consciousness narrative style (a style pioneered by Woolf and James Joyce) in which the flowing thoughts and perceptions of protagonists are depicted as they would occur in real life, unfiltered, flitting from one thing to another, and often rather unpredictable. In terms of time, this means characters interact not only with the moment in the time in which they are living, but also shoot back to the past in their memories, and in so doing create a depth of history and backstory which weighs upon their present moments, which otherwise might appear quite trivial; buying flowers, baking a cake and such things.

Cunningham's novel also uses the device in Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway of placing the action of the novel within the space of one day. In Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway it is one day in the life of the central character Clarissa Dalloway. In Cunningham's book it is one day in the life of each of the three central characters; Clarissa Vaughan, Laura Brown and Virginia Woolf herself. Through this prism, Cunningham attempts, as did Woolf, to show the beauty and profundity of every day—even the most ordinary—in every person's life and conversely how a person's whole life can be examined through the prism of one single day.

Michael Cunningham took the novel's title, The Hours, from the original working title that Virginia Woolf used for Mrs. Dalloway.

Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels:

Fugitive Pieces is a novel by Canadian poet Anne Michaels. First published in 1996 ^[1] (1997 in the UK),^[2] it was awarded the Books in Canada First Novel Award, the Trillium Book Award, Orange Prize for Fiction, Guardian Fiction Prize and the Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize.

It is written in two sections, called Book I and Book II. The first follows the story of Jakob Beer, who as a Jewish child in Poland narrowly escapes being killed by the Nazis. He is rescued by a Greek geologist, Athos Roussos, who adopts him and takes him to live on Zakynthos in Greece. After the war the pair emigrate to Toronto. The novel follows Jakob's life as he marries and goes through life. The second book is written from the perspective of an admirer of Jakob's poetry, Ben.

The novel is written in a poetic style with persistent layers of metaphor, often called forth via Athos Roussos. Roussos' paleobotanical research involves peeling back physical layers of archaeological strata as well as temporal layers of change and decay. The novel explores themes of trauma, grief, loss, and memory, as well as discovery both personal and scientific.

The novel has been made into a feature film produced by Robert Lantos through his Toronto-based Serendipity Point Films Inc. It opened on the opening day of the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival. It is directed by Jeremy Podeswa based on his original screenplay adaptation of the Michaels novel. It stars Stephen Dillane as Jakob Beer and Rade Šerbedžija as Athos.

The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde:

The Eyre Affair is the first published novel^[1] by English author Jasper Fforde, released by Hodder and Stoughton in 2001. It takes place in alternative 1985, where literary detective Thursday Next pursues a master criminal through the world of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre.

In a parallel universe, England and Imperial Russia have fought the Crimean War for more than a century; England itself is still a parliamentary government, although heavily influenced by the Goliath Corporation (a powerful weapon-producing company with questionable morals); and Wales is a separate, socialist nation. The book's fictional version of Jane Eyre ends with Jane accompanying her cousin, St. John Rivers, to India in order to help him with his missionary work. Literary questions (especially the question of Shakespearean authorship) are debated so hotly that they sometimes inspire gang wars and murder. While regular law enforcement agencies still exist, new ones have also been created to deal with situations too specialized for traditional police work. These agencies fall under the single organization SpecOps (Special Operations), with more than 20 branches, including SpecOps 12, the Chronoguard, who police all events related to time travel, and SpecOps 27, the Literary Detectives, or "LiteraTecs", who deal with all literature-related crimes.

TTC--In the Field, Good Form, Field Trip, Ghost Soldiers

AGENDA:

Homework: Read to pg. 219 in The Things They Carried for Thursday


Figures of Speech
http://grammar.about.com/od/rhetoricstyle/a/20figures.htm 

Discussion Questions :

“In the Field”
1.    Briefly summarize the plot and style of the story. Is this story more of a “true” war story than the account in the chapter “Speaking of Courage”?
2.    What point of view is used to narrate “In the Field”? 
3.    Why is the young man not identified in the story? What is the character’s purpose in the narrative? 
4.    In “In The Field,” O'Brien writes, “When a man died, there had to be blame.” What does this mandate do to the men of O'Brien's company? Are they justified in thinking themselves at fault? How do they cope with their own feelings of culpability? Consider all of the characters.
 5.    What, in the end, is the significance of the shit field story (or stories)?


 “Good Form”
1.    In “Good Form,” O'Brien casts doubt on the veracity of the entire novel. Why does he do so? Does it make you more or less interested in the novel? Does it increase or decrease your understanding? What is the difference between “happening-truth” and “story-truth?”

From an interview with Tim O'Brien.
 It's a great interview.  You can read the whole thing at:
 www3.wooster.edu/artfuldodge/interviews/obrien.htm


DS: Speaking of credibility, in The Things They Carried there are numerous devices-come-ons, enticements, snares for the reader-such as starting out stories with "It's time to be blunt" or "This is true," having one story supposedly give the facts about the evolution of another story, or naming the narrator after yourself. It seems to me that an appropriate metaphor for talking about this aspect of the book would be that you're seducing the reader, and that obviously the reader can have ambivalent feelings toward such a seduction. Do you see that?
O'Brien: I'd say that maybe it is an appropriate metaphor, probably not one I would use, but it's certainly appropriate. I guess that's what I was trying to do, to make the reader feel those sorts of ambivalences. Hearing a story, being seduced, then having the seducer say "by the way, I don't love you, it all isn't true." And then doing it again. And then saying, "that also isn't true, just kidding," and doing it again. It's not just a game, though. It's not what that "Good Form" chapter is about. It's form. This whole book is about fiction, about why we do fiction. Every reader is always seduced by a good work of fiction. That is, by a lie, seduced by a lie. Huckleberry Finn did not happen, but if you're reading Huckleberry Finn you're made to believe that it is happening. If you didn't believe it, then it would be a lousy work of fiction. One wouldn't be seduced. And I'm trying to write about the way in which fiction takes place. I'm like a seducer, yet beneath all the acts of seduction there's a kind of love going on, a kind of trust you're trying to establish with the reader, saying "here's who I am, here's why I'm doing what I'm doing. And in fact I do truly love you, I'm not just tricking you, I'm letting you in on my game, letting you in on who I am, what I am, and why I am doing what I am doing." All these lies are the surface of something. I have to lie to you and explain why I am lying to you, why I'm making these things up, in order to get you to know me and to know fiction, to know what art is about. And it's going to hurt now and then, and you're going to get angry now and then, but I want to do it to you anyway�and for you. That's the point of the book.
DS: It strikes me as interesting that your first book is a real memoir, while your last is a pseudo-memoir. How do you see that development, the relation between the way you want to accomplish those seductions in nonfiction and in fiction? Would you write nonfiction again?
O'Brien: There are all kinds of things that occur to me in answer to your question. One is that I don't form my career, my writerly interests, consciously. I don't outline a novel and say "Here's where I'm going next" in terms of form and so on. The language just takes me there. A scrap of language will occur to me that seems interesting. And one of the first scraps of language that occurred to me in writing The Things They Carried was the line, "This is true." When that line was written, "This is true," the form of the book wasn't present by any means, but the thematic "aboutness" of the book was there in those three words. "This is true." I had no idea what I was going to do with it, or where it would take me, but I knew in my bones as well as intellectually that this was important, these three words are important words. I didn't know important in what way or how I'd be exploring them, but I knew they were important. In the way I'm responding to your question, I guess I'm not trying to evade it exactly as much as I'm trying to speak in terms of heart. In terms of heart I don't think about these things much, and don't want to think about them. I prefer to look at writing as a heroistic act, finding out what I care about through writing stories. "Why do I care about truth? I don't know why I care about it!" And I'll write a story like "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong," for example, in which the guy Rat Kiley is telling the story and within the context of the story the matter of truth gets talked about. All along I've cared about this, but now in writing the story I wanted to know how I cared. That is, I always wondered, "Why am I making this stuff up? Why am I writing these stories?" But I never pursued it intellectually. I just said, "Well, I am." But I always wondered, and by writing those words down I began to realize there's a way you can begin to ask yourself a question seriously, methodically.
DB: So you are talking with yourself, then, while you're writing, especially with the stories in The Things They Carried.
O'Brien: In a way I am talking to myself, although it doesn't feel like that. The way it feels is as though I'm composing a story. It feels as if something else is talking to me. I'm not sure what it is. The characters? I'll write a line, fully believing in it. Then, once it's written, I'll believe it's been uttered by this person, Mitchell Sanders or Rat. They would say to someone else, "You guys are sexist. What do you mean you can't have a pussy for president?" Meanwhile, I've just written this line and I'll say, "What pussy? where did this come from?" Then I'll think, "This guy said this!" He accuses these other guys of being sexist and then he himself uses language like that and it jars a little in my head, but in a good way. Here's a guy talking about being sexist while he's doing it himself. It shows me the complexity of the material until I don't feel I've written it, though I know I have, and so I consciously keep the word "pussy," knowing it bounces off the "You guys are all sexist." But, at the same time, I don't feel as though I've written these words, as though the phrase had been directed toward me. Instead, I ask what some character in the story might say in response. Once a story is underway I no longer feel in complete control. I feel that I'm at the whim of my creations. I'll be pulled by them as much as I'll be pulling them. It sounds mystical, probably too mystical, but that's really how it feels. I think you can understand why I feel that way. Your questions here, for example, are tugging me, while I'm partly responsible for these enquiries because of the consequences of the things I've written. But I no longer feel in control of your responses to the things I've written.
DB: Given your statement that everything in The Things They Carried is fiction, can we believe "Notes" is nonfiction, when at least the surface assumption is that here you're giving us the truth about what went on in the composition of another story?
O'Brien: You ought not to believe it. In fact, it's utterly and absolutely invented. It's an example of one more seduction on top of the rest. No Norman Bowker, and no mother. It's a way of displaying that form can dictate belief, that the form of the footnote, the authority that the footnote carries, is persuasive in how we apprehend things. We think once again we're locked into a factual world by form, and that process is a great deal what the book is about, including the next little note called "Good Form," which is sort of the same thing. It says, "Well, I'm going to confess something to you. It's time to be blunt. None of this stuff happened. I'm going to tell you no guy ever died, and here's what really happened." And then the next paragraph is going to say but that story too is invented. Here's the real story. Of course, that one's invented, too. I just don't say so in the story