Tim O’Brien Essay Example for Free

Tim OBrien EssayTim OBrien is a salutary-know fight writer, probably the most famous war writer of our cartridge holder but also a writer rough relationships that disintegrate and how they do so. His novels hinge on his own experiences in the Vietnam War or the time leading up to that experience. But he is not a typical writer of war. In Tim OBriens novels, OBrien blurs the lines between equity and portrayal of truth or fiction. In kernel, he says that there is no such thing as truth. the true depends on the perception of the person experiencing the episode and what goes on in the legal opinion of this person. The truth fades and shifts or is illuminated further in the narrateing.Truth is slippery and ever-changing and completely subjective. He blurs these lines over and over again to show the reader the slippery slope of what we call truth. OBrien, in some ways, fag end tell the same shapes of stories but with a diametrical focus so they ar completely new. Overal l, OBrien believes in the spring of stories. As OBrien says, Im a believer in the precedent of stories, whether theyre true or embellished, and exaggerated, or utterly made up. A peachy story has a power that transcends the incredulity of factuality or actuality (Bonn). OBriens novel styles and themes begin right from the number 1 of his c arer. . If I Die in the Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home was published in 1973. It is a memoir which deals with Vietnam and the region around My Lai. It was the first bind that began OBriens genre of what is called germinal nonfiction. And then comes his first published novel, Northern Lights discusses two br differents. One has returned from war wounded and the two brothers are uncomfortable with their own lives as well as their relationships with their father, who has died. His themes of war and radioactive decay of relationships begin to be shown in this novel.He continues with these themes in way out After Cacciato published in 1978 and the Nuclear Age in 1985. Going After Caccioto is the story of a soldier who decides to run away from the Vietnam War. In umteen ways, this novel is an foregoing telling of a story from The Things They Carried. The short story On the Rainy River retells this novel, only with a different ending, which characterizes OBriens creative nonfiction. In other words, the novel is another way that the story could meet ended, not necessarily the way it did end. Nuclear Age is a discussion of how we would live if confronted with the possibility of thermonuclear extinction.Then in 1990 he seems to hit a stride and critical acclaim with The Things They Carried. This is a assemblage of short stories but also a novel in itself as it begins and ends with the same story. The book begins with the quote, This is a work of fiction. Except for a few details regarding the authors own life, all the incidents, names, and characters are imaginary (OBrien). Two pages later OBrien provides a dedic ation to the men of Alpha Company, and in item to Jimmy Cross, Norman Bowker, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Henry Dobbins, and Kiowa. (OBrien). These are the novels main characters. The reader is meant to question the blur of the lines between fact and fiction. The reader is meant to ask, Why OBrien would be thanking these men if this work is only fiction? In this book, Tim OBrien manages this blur of truth in many other ways as well. One of those ways is that he creates a narrator who is modeled after himself. This narrator is a Harvard grad, a drafted Vietnam War vet, and goes by the name of Tim OBrien. The reader is encouraged to connect the narrator with the author as a way to question what is true. The narrator says, I need you to feel what I felt. I want you to know wherefore story-truth is truer than happening-truth (OBrien 203).When asked in an interview, What do you say when people ask, Are these stories true? Tim replies, Tim I tell them to reread the book. Its kind of the point of the book What is truth? Tim explains more than thoroughly when he dialog in the same interview about getting to a deeper truth through fiction.One of the chapters in The Things They Carried is about a character with my name going to the Canadian border. He meets an old man up there, almost crosses into Canada but doesnt. I never literally did any of these things, but I thought about it. It was all happening in my dreams and in my head. And the one thing fiction put forward do is hold up it seem real. To let the reader participate in this kid making this journey and it feels like its really happening. You hope the readers asking the same questions that you were back then. You know, like What would I do? Would I go to Canada? What do I think of war? So all the same if the story never happened, literally, it happened in my head. If I were to tell you the literal truth about that summer, the truth would be that I compete a lot of golf and worried a lot about the draft (Curran). In other words, what is the real meaning of truth? OBrien plays with this concept over and over in his fiction. The portrays the strangeness of how the mind works when dealing with memories and hypothetical situations.In the Lake of the Woods published in 1994 A spooked veteran who has secrets discovers that his married woman has secrets too. Both of these people escape to the inner recesses of their own minds in order to come to some kind of terms with their lives. OBrien shows his mastery at blurring the lines between reality and fantasy here as well as the novel focuses on two of his favorite subjects, war and failing relationships. As the couple struggles with the secrets in their relationship, OBrien uncovers that fact that truth is what we say it is, and what we say determines how and what we think. He continues to blur the lines even further with an probe called The Vietnam in Me in 1994 in which he goes back to Vietnam twenty years later to reflect on the experie nces of the Vietnam War. This essay also explores the deterioration of a relationship for him. He basically tries to reconcile what really happened in My Lai in his mind after all these years while faced with the gap opening up between he and Kate.His more recent work changes focus just a bit. War becomes more secondary content. In Tomcat in Love (1998) this humorous story or black prank as it is called in the Gadfly interview is told from the perspective of a sexist professor who attempts to deal with the disintegration of his relationship. However, he tries to wreak revenge on his ex-wife by sabotaging her current relationship. And in July, July (2002) ten friends reunite about 30 years after they graduate. They find that many of the same things haunt them now as obsessed them then, only they are at totally different places in their lives. This story is much like The Things they Carried in that the individual stories are tied together in the end. One of the characters has been th rough Vietnam, but more than anything this book is again about re-telling of the truth. The truths that these characters had identified for themselves thirty years ago are different in many ways than their truths of today. Does that understand them any less true? When asked about the various truths of this novel,BRC Your books, and their characters, display a genuine amount of moral ambiguitya sense of this is true but that also is trueor both could be true at the same time. Does this reflect your personal philosophy?TO Yes. Truth evolves. Truth is fluid. Truth is a function of language. (If I were to say to you, Its now 1000 A.M., I would be telling the truth of Boston, Massachusetts, but not the truth of Tokyo Japan). A lie, sometimes, can be truer than the truth, which is why fiction gets written. (Bookreporter).Ultimately Tim OBrien is a writer who deserves all the acclaim he gets as he has much to say not only about war and relationships but about the very essence of truth it self. He is a storyteller in every sense of the word and believes in the power of stories, no matter what kind they are. In an interview, he clearly demonstrates his philosophy about the power of storytelling and truth.Interviewer What can stories do for us?Tim Stories do a lot for us. They can help us heal. They can make us feel part of something bigger. We all tell stories to ourselvesabout today and tomorrowwe live our lives ground on a story we tell ourselves. And were constantly adjusting ithoping for a happy ending. (Curran)He describes good fiction as fiction that makes us facet inside ourselves and OBrien is a master even when the content of the stories are not typical for most of us. He can make us look at courage and truth and evaluate our own relationships all in the reading of his fiction.Works CitedTim OBrien, Novelist. Retrieved November 27, 2007 at Web website http//illyria.com/tobhp.htmlIver, Pico, Missing in Contemplation, Time Magazine. 2001, Retrieved November 2 7, 2007 at Web Site http//www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101941024-163119,00.htmlBonn, Maria S. Can Stories Save Us? Tim OBrien and the Efficacy of the Text, Critique, Fall 1994, No 1 2-5.Brien, The Things They Carried, Broadway Publishing. 1991.Curran, Colleen. Tim OBrien discusses The Things They Carried in Richmond for GO READ. Nov. 11, 2003. Retrieved November 27, 2007 at http//www.richmond.com/ae/output.aspx?Article_ID=2730476Tim OBrien. Retrieved November 30. 2007 at Web Site http//www.bookreporter.com/authors/au-obrien-tim.asp