Fucheng Cai
Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried is a war novel describing the story as well as the inner psyche of a group of soldiers during and after the Vietnam War. Although this is a war novel, it is neither bloody nor violent. There are no great acts of heroism, senses of torture, or scenes of slaughter. However, while we are drawn in by the author’s story, we find that one of the soldiers, Norman Bowker, is suffering from the pain of being unable to speak about the horrors of war that he has witnessed. Norman drives around the lake twelve times, has no capacity to talk about his war story with others, and commits suicide in the end. Speaking out about war traumatic experiences serves as a kind of traumatic therapy because a traumatic situation can be discharged through language, making it possible to avoid feelings of helplessness in the face of an accumulation of …show more content…
If Bowker could speak out his traumatic burden, his destiny might have been different. Tim O’Brien, another character who shares the author’s name suffers from the inaudible words we can term gaze-discourses deriving from his conscience and the will of the Other－the superego. He once tried to be a draft-dodger, as he disagreed with the Vietnam War, yet the superego is so powerful that Tim O’Brien eventually joins the war. When reading this war novel, we naturally let the author guide us with his desires, and we freely follow him to feel the scenes and emotions conveyed in every chapter. He takes us to experience the love, friendship, and emotions with his narrative art in this war story. Using a Sentimental War Discourse, the author creates a war novel that is not so heavy that help to relieve our fears and makes us want to read more of this war novel. Nevertheless, it is not necessarily effective at actually uplifting readers, as this is irrelevant to the moral of the story. After all, it is a war novel about
Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried is a war novel describing the story as well as the inner psyche of a group of soldiers during and after the Vietnam War. Although this is a war novel, it is neither bloody nor violent. There are no great acts of heroism, senses of torture, or scenes of slaughter. However, while we are drawn in by the author’s story, we find that one of the soldiers, Norman Bowker, is suffering from the pain of being unable to speak about the horrors of war that he has witnessed. Norman drives around the lake twelve times, has no capacity to talk about his war story with others, and commits suicide in the end. Speaking out about war traumatic experiences serves as a kind of traumatic therapy because a traumatic situation can be discharged through language, making it possible to avoid feelings of helplessness in the face of an accumulation of …show more content…
If Bowker could speak out his traumatic burden, his destiny might have been different. Tim O’Brien, another character who shares the author’s name suffers from the inaudible words we can term gaze-discourses deriving from his conscience and the will of the Other－the superego. He once tried to be a draft-dodger, as he disagreed with the Vietnam War, yet the superego is so powerful that Tim O’Brien eventually joins the war. When reading this war novel, we naturally let the author guide us with his desires, and we freely follow him to feel the scenes and emotions conveyed in every chapter. He takes us to experience the love, friendship, and emotions with his narrative art in this war story. Using a Sentimental War Discourse, the author creates a war novel that is not so heavy that help to relieve our fears and makes us want to read more of this war novel. Nevertheless, it is not necessarily effective at actually uplifting readers, as this is irrelevant to the moral of the story. After all, it is a war novel about