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Up until World War I “descriptions of war in America are confined primarily to generals’ account . . . leaving much of the war’s confusion and chaos to the imagination” (Smith 11). American writers rarely considered war as a viable literary subject, until Stephen Crane’s civil war novel, The Red Badge of Courage. Despite Crane having never been in a war zone his publication is considered among the first to capture the potential of the battlefield as a literary backdrop. Further developing the war novel genre, Ernest Hemingway adds what Smith describes as a “journalistic style” to a more modern skeptical outlook on war. Just as Hemingway’s work provides graphic detail of World War I, Tim O’Brien’s novels “[have] become the Vietnam literature of record . . . [in] contemporary war fiction” (Smith 12). Like Hemingway,1 O’Brien takes on a journalistic approach to his novels. Narrating with his typical method of fragmented stream-of-consciousness, Tim O’Brien recalls his past experiences as a soldier and creates a meta-fiction that illustrates the Vietnam War as a senseless paradox.
Fusing physical incident and creative writing, O’Brien establishes his novel in the form of a meta-fiction. The disparity is O’Brien’s first tool in developing his conclusions about the immense contradictions of the Vietnam War.2 For the purposes of this literary analysis the term meta-fiction indicates the blending of factual occurrence and fictitious detail. As defined by Patricia Waugh, meta-fiction is “a fictional writing which self-consciously . . . draws attention to its status as [fiction] in order to [examine] the relationship between fiction and reality” (Waugh 2). In this manner, meta-fiction allows an author to explore a particular event from mu...
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... Catherine. “‘How to Tell a True War Story’: Meta-fiction in The Things They
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Herzog, Tobey. Tim O’Brien. New York: Twayne, 1997. Print
Levin, Harry. “Observations on the Style of Ernest Hemingway.” The Kenyone Review
13.4 (1951):581- 609. Jstor. Web. 22 Oct. 2009.
Moore, Julie. “Tim O’Brien’s Blurring of the Lines Between Reality and Fantasy.”
Arts & Entertainment (2007): 4. Associated Content. Web. 10 October 2009.
O’Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990. Print.
Smith, Patrick. Tim O’Brien a Critical Companion. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2005. Print.
Waugh, Patricia. Metafiction: The Theory and Practice of Self-conscious Fiction.
New York: Routledge, 1984. Print.
Tim O’Brien begins his journey as a young “politically naive” man and has recently graduated out of Macalester College in the United States of America. O’Brien’s plan for the future is steady, but this quickly changes as a call to an adventure ruins his expected path in life. In June of 1968, he receives a draft notice, sharing details about his eventual service in the Vietnam War. He is not against war, but this certain war seemed immoral and insignificant to Tim O’Brien. The “very facts were shrouded in uncertainty”, which indicates that the basis of the war isn’t well known and perceived
The Vietnam War has become a focal point of the Sixties. Known as the first televised war, American citizens quickly became consumed with every aspect of the war. In a sense, they could not simply “turn off” the war. A Rumor of War by Philip Caputo is a firsthand account of this horrific war that tore our nation apart. Throughout this autobiography, there were several sections that grabbed my attention. I found Caputo’s use of stark comparisons and vivid imagery, particularly captivating in that, those scenes forced me to reflect on my own feelings about the war. These scenes also caused me to look at the Vietnam War from the perspective of a soldier, which is not a perspective I had previously considered. In particular, Caputo’s account of
Tim O’Brien’s ultimate purpose is to detract the fine line between fiction and reality. In order to fully grasp what a true war story consists of, the definition of true must be deciphered. O’Brien seems to believe that it does not need to be pure facts. Instead, it is mostly found in the imagination of the individual. Readers need to receive a story based on the truth in its overall purpose and meaning. It just needs to feel true. The author implies that it is not important whether the event actually occurred or not, because if the reader wants to believe it that badly, the feeling of truth will always be present.
Neilson, Jim. Warring Fictions: American Literary Culture and the Vietnam War Narrative. Jackson: Mississippi UP, 1998
Though in his short life Stephen Crane was never a soldier, his novel The Red Badge of Courage was commended by Civil War veterans as well as veterans from more recent wars not only for its historical accuracy but its ability to capture the psychological evolution of those on the field of battle (Heizberg xvi). Walt Whitman, on the other hand, served as a field medic during the Civil War. He was exposed perhaps to the most gruesome aspect of the war on a daily basis: the primitive medical techniques, the wounded, the diseased, the dying and the dead. Out of his experiences grew a collection of poems, "Drum Taps" , describing the horrors he had witnessed and that America suffered. As literary artists, a wide chasm of structure and style separates Crane and Whitman. The common cultural experience, the heritage of the Civil War connects them, throwing a bridge across the darkness, allowing them, unilaterally, to dispel notions of glorious battles and heroic honorable deaths. By examining Crane's Henry Fleming and the wound dresser from 'Whitman's poem of the same name, both fundamental literary differences and essential thematic consistencies emerge.
Author Tim O’Brien in “How to Tell a True War Story” uses the physical and mental mindset of isolation in the Vietnam war to create a story with many literary devices that makes a captivating story. The author uses point of view, verbal irony, and the character Tim O’Brien to enhance his written experiences of the Vietnam War. This story teaches the reader that experiences that were lived by the reader can be altered by the mind to a certain extent, where they can be questioned as true or not. Perhaps at a sports game or in a heated situation such as a police chase or court case. Tim O’Brien’s experiences have captivated many readers, but are they true? Or just a product of insanity from war? Well, Tim O’Brien leaves that up to the reader to decide.
Soldier's Personal Narratives of the Vietnam War and The Vietnam War and the Tragedy of Containment
Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried is not a novel about the Vietnam War. “It is a story about the soldiers and their experiences and emotions that are brought about from the war” (King 182). O'Brien makes several statements about war through these dynamic characters. He shows the violent nature of soldiers under the pressures of war, he makes an effective antiwar statement, and he comments on the reversal of a social deviation into the norm. By skillfully employing the stylistic technique of specific, conscious detail selection and utilizing connotative diction, O'Brien thoroughly and convincingly makes each point.
Of course O’Brien recounts his own experiences during the war, but he also uses metafiction to parallel the relationship between fiction immortality. Not only does he relive his experiences in Vietnam by telling war stories, he examines the mechanics behind writing stories. By paralleling these two aspects, O’Brien produces a novel that exposes the purpose behind his stories, and the relationship between fiction, reality, and the immortality of storytelling. Unlike most war novels, O’Brien’s stories are not written for therapeutic purposes or to convey an image of heroism. He tells the tales in The Things They Carried to recount and preserve his past, and to realize that the results of his experiences made him who he is
The Vietnam War was not a “pretty” war. Soldiers were forced to fight guerilla troops, were in combat during horrible weather, had to live in dangerous jungles, and, worst of all, lost sight of who they were. Many soldiers may have entered with a sense of pride, but returned home desensitized. The protagonist in Louise Erdrich’s “The Red Convertible,” is testament to this. In the story, the protagonist is a young man full of life prior to the war, and is a mere shell of his former self after the war. The protagonists in Tim O’Brien’s “If I Die in a Combat Zone,” and Irene Zabytko’s “Home Soil,” are also gravely affected by war. The three characters must undergo traumatic experiences. Only those who fought in the Vietnam War understand what these men, both fictional and in real life, were subjected to. After the war, the protagonists of these stories must learn to deal with a war that was not fought with to win, rather to ensure the United States remained politically correct in handling the conflict. This in turn caused much more anguish and turmoil for the soldiers. While these three stories may have fictionalized events, they connect with factual events, even more so with the ramifications of war, whether psychological, morally emotional, or cultural. “The Red Convertible,” and “Home Soil,” give readers a glimpse into the life of soldiers once home after the war, and how they never fully return, while “If I Die in a Combat Zone,” is a protest letter before joining the war. All three protagonists must live with the aftermath of the Vietnam War: the loss of their identity.
Bao Ninh's The Sorrow of War is a contrapuntal reading to American literature on the Vietnam War. But rather than stand in stark contrast to Tim O' Brien's The Things They Carried, The Sorrow of War is strangely similar, yet different at the same time. From a post-colonialist standpoint, one must take in account both works to get an accurate image of the war. The Sorrow of War is an excellent counterpoint because it is truthful. Tim O' Brien writes: ". . . you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil." (O' Brien, 42) Bao Ninh succeeds in this respect. And it was for this reason that the Vietnamese government initially banned The Sorrow of War. A thorough textual and historical examination of both the war and post-war experience of Vietnam reveals that its experience was similar to, if not worse than, that of America.
Unlike the WWII era, the Vietnam War brought realism into literature and film. There were no heroic movies of men fighting in Vietnam. Men could no longer shoot fifty enemy combatants on top of a tank without being hurt. Instead, popular culture brought a realistic view of war, death, pain, and destruction. Author Tim O’Brien, like many war veterans, struggled with his Vietnam experience and expressed them through writing. Tim O’Brien exposed the truth behind war stories because he shows the difference between WWII romanticism and Vietnam realism.
Schroeder, Eric James. "Tim O'Brien: Maybe So." Vietnam, We've All Been There: Interviews with American Writers. Ed. Eric James Schroeder. Westport, Conn: Praeger, 1992. 125-43.
O’Brien, Tim. “How To Tell a True War Story.” The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed. Michael Meyer. Boston: Bedford St. Martins, 2003. p. 420-429.
Some authors choose to write stories and novels specifically to evoke certain emotions from their readers as opposed to writing it for just a visual presentation. In order to do this, they occasionally stretch the truth and “distort” the event that actually occurred. The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, is a compilation of short stories about the Vietnam War with distortion being a key element in each of them.