ENG 104H Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: The Things They Carried, Macalester College, Anti-Communism
Tim O’Brien - Truth in Fiction (The Things They Carried)
Childhood & College
- Born in 1946 (during Vietnam)
- Raised in Worthington, Minnesota (small town, disconnected)
- Spent time practicing magic tricks and going to library
- BA in Political Science and Macalester College
College and the War
- Drafted at age 22
- Considered dodging to Canada
- Was opposed to war, but decided he would feel guilty if someone else took his
place
- Two years as sergeant, including one year in Vietnam
- Unit in My Lai, one year after a massacre
- People were very hostile because the Americans had opened fire on them
- Wounded in combat - Purple Heart
Career
- Writes memoirs, short stories fiction
- Often compared to Stephen Crane, Vonnegut, Hemingway
- They wrote about hardship of being a soldier instead of glorifying war
- The Things They Carried is part of a larger collection of same time
- Writes and Teaches at Texas State University in San Marcos
O’Brien’s MetaFiction
- Verisimilitude: truth and fiction are inseparable
- “A...thing may not happen and still be truer than the truth.”
- In This Story
- Tim O’Brien is a character in the other stories but is not the author (diff details)
- Characters are named after real men in O’Brien’s company
- Set in the same province where he fought
Vietnam War (1955-1975)
- US involved (1961-1973)
- Estimated casualties: 1-3 million Vietnamese, 58,000 Americans, 200-500,000
Cambodians/Laotian
- Cold War Proxy (USSR & USA)
US supported one side, the USSR fought the other
- North Vietnam: Communist, USSR, China,e tc.
- South Vietnam: supported by US & other anti communist allies
- Viet Cong: Guerilla fighters in the South who supported the north
- America lost, pulled troops out of Saigon
- Soldiers came back to tension, was controversial
