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Critical Insights: The Things They Carried
Tim O’Brien’s innovative volume is increasingly regarded as one of the most significant books of its era. Sometimes seen as a collection of interrelated short stories and sometimes as an innovative quasi-novel, the book is intriguing not only for its generic and stylistic experimentations but also for the ways it deals with the Vietnam War.
It deals with such important themes as the burdens of war, truth and storytelling, guilt and responsibility, and memory and trauma. Other significant issues include masculinity and emotional suppression, death and loss, and alienation and disconnection.
The book has been praised for its innovative narrative structure, its emotional depth, its philosophical complexity, and its clear but resonant language and style—a style in which prose often seems poetic and in which profound implications are suggested by seemingly simple words. The Things They Carried is a landmark in American literature and can help any present-day reader understand the importance of one of the most divisive and influential wars in American history.
Like all the other volumes in the Critical Insights series, this work gives readers a diverse collection of essays that unpack, critique, and analyze themes and styles used in The Things They Carried, organized so that each essay builds upon and helps reinforce the others.
In the introductory essay, Susan Farrell recounts how she herself first encountered O’Brien’s works in general and The Things They Carried in particular. She then offers an overview of all things O’Brien, including the ways his books have been received by literary critics (both positively and in some cases negatively), just as she also surveys many of the central thematic concerns of serious students of his work. She provides, in many ways, an ideal introduction to this volume. Her essay is then followed by a sketch of O’Brien’s life and career.
Four Critical Contexts essays examine The Things They Carried in terms of four distinct critical contexts—an essay that sets the work in a specific historical context; an overview of major critical approaches; an examination of the book using a specific “critical lens;” and then an essay that compares and contrasts O’Brien’s work in relation to another, similar piece of creative writing. These Critical Contexts essays include:
- The Initial Reception of The Things They Carried
- The Things They Carried: 35 Years of Critical Commentary
- History, Memory, and Story in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried
- Combat Zones: The Things They Carried and A.F.N. Clarke’s Contact
Next, O’Brien’s text is examined using a variety of diverse “Critical Readings,” which include the following essays:
- Remembrance of Deaths Past: Repetition, Reanimation, and Release
- “Like God, or like the gods”: War, Epic, and Anti-Epic in The Things They Carried
- “Their principles were in their feet”: Feet and Symbolism in The Things They Carried
- Some Functions of Lists, Listing, and Repetition in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried
- Lying Narrators: Endangered Testimonies in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried
- Paradoxical Testimonies of the Vietnam War in Ordinary Landscapes: “Recovered” Memories in Tim O’Brien’s Short Story “Field Trip”
- Cinematic Allusions in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried
- Early Efforts to Censor and Ban Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried
Each essay in Critical Insights: The Things They Carried includes a list of Works Cited and detailed endnotes. The final section, Resources, offers a chronology of O’Brien’s life, a chronological listing of his main works, and a detailed bibliography of commentary about his writings, especially The Things They Carried. Finally, this section closes with an About the Editor section, Contributors, and a detailed Index.
The Critical Insights Series distills the best of both classic and current literary criticism of the world’s most studied literature. Edited and written by some of academia’s most distinguished literary scholars, Critical Insights: The Things They Carried provides authoritative, in-depth scholarship that students and researchers will rely on for years. This volume is destined to become a valuable purchase for all.
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