PS1: The Things They Carried - Entry #1 of 3

O’Brien plays with my expectations of what fiction is and consequently complicates my understanding of what reality is. The collision of fiction and reality takes place before the first story begins. The title page insists that The Things They Carried is “a work of fiction by Tim O’Brien.” He dedicates the book to “Alpha Company” and lists the names of recurring characters from the work. Were these guys real people? For the epigraph, O’Brien uses an actual excerpt from the actual diary of an actual Union soldier reflecting on his experiences in a Confederate prison; I had to look that one up, because I assumed O’Brien invented John Ransom (he didn’t).  When people asked me what I was reading this summer, I often had to pause before my reply. It’s not quite a novel, a memoir, a collection of short stories. It seems like it’s all of those things. The way the work itself defies categorization makes me think of how O’Brien’s explorations of truth, courage, loyalty, responsibility, and memory force me to reconsider my assumptions about those concepts. I’m thinking in particular of the challenges he poses in “On the Rainy River” to conventional views of courage. The narrator Tim O’Brien (real guy or fictional creation?) describes himself as cowardly for going to war and calls into question the notion that fighting in a war is automatically courageous. I guess reading good fiction does help readers pose provocative questions and force them to reevaluate their perspectives on what is real.

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SS#1: "The Role of the Ideal (Female) Reader in Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried" by Pamela Smiley

Citation:

Smiley, Pamela. "The Role of the Ideal (Female) Reader in Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried": Why Should Real Women Play?" The Massachusetts Review 43.4 (2002): 602-13. JSTOR. Web. 02 June 2014.http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/25091896?uid=3739696&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21104249704543

Summary:

Smiley examines how female characters are portrayed in The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien.  She argues that O'Brien redefines American masculinity by subverting traditional war fiction conventions, including how female characters are represented.  She claims that the narrator's opportunity for spiritual redemption lies in the unification of feminine and masculine principles.

Quotation #1:

"War fiction is usually less concerned with women than with rituals and tests that 'make you a man' (87).  The plotting of these - in novels, film, and popular culture - follows genre conventions.  First is the separation from women and their 'civilizing' influence.  Second is the performance of masculinity according to traditional standards involving bravery, physical prowess, and virility.  And third is the company of men, particularly the wizened sergeant (or some other father figure) who pronounces the young soldier 'a man' (Smiley 603).

Paraphrase #1:

War stories typically follow gender conventions such as the separation of men from women (who are associated with civilization), stereotypical masculine traits/acts, and the inclusions of a "father figure" character that inducts young soldiers into manhood.

Evaluation #1:

S        Smiley's description of gender conventions in war fiction could set up my argument about how O'Brien defies these conventions in his novels in order to examine the de-gendering effect of war.  It might be important to note that while other authors have subverted these conventions prior to O'Brien, few have specifically challenged gender roles to the same extent.  

Quotation #2:

"Interestingly, The Things They Carried, departs radically from these conventions.  Mary Ann, in Vietnam, not only fails to 'civilize,' but is herself seduced by the war.  It is not to a company of men that O'Brien's characters perform, but rather to ideal readers in the form of Lemon's sister and the woman at the reading.  And instead of an act of uncompromised masculinity signaling the boy is now a man, O'Brien's character appropriates the feminine, becoming an androgynous fusion of preadolescent Timmy and Linda (Smiley 603).

Paraphrase #2:

O'Brien subverts war story conventions through a female character that is attracted to war, the men's stories are expressed to an "ideal" female reader - not other male soldiers, and rather than coming of age through a masculine act, O'Brien's narrator has androgynous characteristics.  

Evaluation #2:

I agree with Smiley’s claim that O’Brien subverts war story gender conventions, perhaps in order to shatter the artifice of equating war with masculinity and to expose the ambiguity underlying any type of traditional role or norm in the chaos of war.   

Quotation #3:

"While it is interesting that O'Brien has his female character taking the world inside her and his male character expanding out to become the world, his point seems to be less the gender stereotypes  than the (non-gendered) Dionysian energy common to both descriptions.  War destroys order, subverts higher processing such as reason and compassion, and returns us to instinct and our bodies.  Such an explosive release allows men and women to be what they might have been without cultural constraints (Smiley 605).

Paraphrase #3:

O'Brien portrays war as a "de-gendering" primal force that favors destructiveness, chaos, and lack of reason, allowing people to transcend cultural constructs such as gender.

Evaluation #3:

This quotation supports my argument that O'Brien's fiction challenges conventional representations of gender in war in an attempt to debunk the mythic archetype of the stoic, male war hero and to instead focus on the universal destructive power of war.  I agree with Smiley's assertion that war is a destabilizer of systems and that all cultural constructs, including gender roles, lose their meaning in the chaos.