Annotated Bibliography
Introduction
Tim O’Brien’s work in The Things They Carried and his other stories have done a great job of telling fictional stories using real life events and circumstances. These ten sources are the ones that have been the greatest in helping me research and understand the way the O’Brien writes and his focus on the Vietnam War or the reasons behind why Lt. Jimmy Cross’ character loses his focus in The Things They Carried.
In both of the articles by Jack Smith and Julie Ooms I have found some great examples as to why O’Brien keeps his focus on the Vietnam War through so much of his writing. There is a clearer understanding of why he writes the way he does and why he has kept the war in the forefront of his mind throughout most of his works. In the article by Roger Smith he links this reasoning to the intimate and personal reasons for O’Brien’s stories.
Within the two articles by Michael Clark and Steven Kaplan I found so more reasoning for Lt. Jimmy Cross’s focus and why O’Brien picked this character to depict this trait. Kaplan explains that nothing about the war is really clear to us unless you lived through it no matter how great O’Brien narration is. Because of this, O’Brien has put so much effort into seeing that we as readers understand what these men when through as best as we can.
John Marciano’s article entitled, “Lessons from the Vietnam War” and Mathew Burke’s article, “The Things They Buried” are both a link to the American population during that time of war. Seeing how not only the American public but also the American government did and still do react to the war is interesting. I also wanted to include the definition of war in my essay and I am using the Webster’s dictionary to do that. I feel that this source is linked to all the other sources as each one has something to do with the Vietnam War.
I also wanted to use our textbook to get direct quotes from the story “The Things They Carried” to help back up my thesis and main ideas. I feel that the website I used with the interview conducted by Josephine Reed of Tim O’Brien and his biography links well to the story from our textbook as well as each of the other sources as well. Learning even more pieces to O’Brien’s background gives me a better understanding of his writing and his intention with his literary works.
Annotated and Analyzed Sources
1.) Burke, Mathew M. “The Things They Buried.” Newsweek Global, vol.168, no. 4, 03 Feb.2017, pp.36-45. EBSCOhost.
This article is about the cover up of three US soldiers that went missing at the end of the Vietnam War. I want to use this as part of my essay to explain how the American public and the American government saw the war from here and how the soldiers had to see the war from there. There is a big difference in hearing about the war and living through it. This also correlates with the way that Martha and Cross speak to one another and the way that each of them views the war.
2.) Clarke, Michael, Travel. “I Fell Close to Myself.” Solipsism and US Imperialism in Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried.” College Literature, vol. 40, no.2, Spring2013, pp.130-154. EBSCOhost.
This essay is a reflection on the literary work of the The Things They Carried. It uses examples from the text to back up the ideas that O’Brien uses his works to examine the war closer and make sure that he nor anyone else is free from the responsibility and the guilt of what happened there. The essay speaks a little about Cross’ character in the story. “The central narrative of the destruction of Than Khe is quickly displaced and repressed by the more trivial story of Lt. Cross's unrequited love for Martha.”(141) The focus of the story and how it continues to return to Cross’ lack of focus is one of my main ideas. “The story of Lt. Cross is about the errors of judgment that result from too much concentration on the self. Lt. Cross believes his daydreams about Martha lead directly to the death of Ted Lavender.”(141) This is a perfect example of the way Cross feels about his focus.
3.) Kaplan, Steven. “The Undying Uncertainty of the Narrator in Tim O’Brien’s ‘The Things They Carried’.” CRITIQUE: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, no. 1, 1993, p. 43. EBSCOhost.
This article is about the narration of The Things They Carried and how that relates to Tim O’Brien’s mentality about the Vietnam War both during the war and when he wrote the story. Kaplan explains that O’Brien’s story cannot give any real definition to war and what happens because you would have had to live it to understand it. “Almost all of the literature on the war, both fictional and nonfictional, makes clear that the only certain thing during the Vietnam War was that nothing was clear.”(Kaplan) This article is a great way of seeing the war and the story through a different perspective.
4.) Marciano, John. “Lessons from the Vietnam War.” Monthly Review: An Independent Socialist Magazine, vol. 68, no.7, Dec. 2016, pp. 43-51. EBSCOhost.
This article will be useful to my essay as I use quotes from the article to support by idea that O’Brien writes about the Vietnam War and focuses so much of his literary works on that war to explain to the American people what happened during that time. It is hard for anyone to imagine what war is like. The American population during that time only had the news media as the primary source of information about the war. This article explains several things that we learned from the war and lists a few misconceptions as well.
5.) O’Brien, Tim. “The Things They Carried.” Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing, Compact Edition. Ed Edgar V. Roberts and Robert Zweig. 6th ed. Boston: Pearson. 2015. Print.
I believe that using the examples from our textbook will be a great way to support my essay’s thesis and main ideas. The story, The Things They Carried, is the base for my essay after all. There are many things that I could use from this portion of our textbook and I plan to make use of it for my essay about Tim O’Brien and his focus on the Vietnam War and why he wanted Lt. Jimmy Cross in his story to be so unfocused.
6.) Ooms, Julie.“Battles Are Always Fought Among Human Beings, Not Purposes.” Tim O’Brien’s Fiction as A Response to the Crisis of Modernity.” Renascence, vol. 66, no. 1, Winter2014, pp.25-45. ESBCOhost
Julie Ooms writes this article about the reasoning behind O’Brien’s literary works. She looks into several of his works including The Things They Carried and Going After Cacciato. Within the first paragraph of the article she does state that although O’Brien’s work is fiction it “attempts to tell the true story” (Pg 25) There is a quote from a 1994 New York Times special entitled "The Vietnam in Me.” Written by O’Brien and Ooms says this of it, “O'Brien points out here that the evils of the Vietnam War are not merely forgotten, but all but deleted from American mythology and memory…”(Pg 26) Ooms is stating that the reasoning for O’Brien’s literary work to be so focused on the Vietnam War is to give the people who fought in that war a voice and something tangible to hold onto that says, we remember, I remember. You are not alone.
7.) Reed, Josephine. “NEA Big Read.” NEA Big Read. N.p., 23 Nov. 2008. Web. 28 Mar. 2017
Complete URL: http://www.neabigread.org/books/thethingstheycarried/readers-guide/about-the-author/
This source is useful to me and my essay because it gives me a little background into O’Brien’s past while he served in the Vietnam War. It gives me a good example of what he went through while he was there. “O'Brien spent his tour of duty from 1969 to 1970 as a foot soldier with the 46th Infantry in Quang Ngai province. For some of that time he was stationed in My Lai, just one year after the infamous My Lai Massacre. He was sent home with a Purple Heart when he got hit with shrapnel in a grenade attack.”(neabigread.org) This is just one example from the website that looks into O’Brien’s time in Vietnam and I think this will add my essay’s main idea about his focus on the war.
8.) Smith, Jack. “The Things He Carries: For Tim O’Brien, the Vietnam War Has Remained A Crucible in His Fiction, but the Power of Imagination and Memory, and our Elusive Interior Worlds, ‘Loom Large. Too.” Writer (Kalmbach Publishing Co.), vol. 123, no. 7, July 2010, pp.16-47. EBSCOhost.
Jack Smith, using the format of an interview, gets to the bottom of several burning questions to Tim O’Brien. It is easy to see the ease the men have with one another and the admiration that Smith has for O’Brien. He first lists several of O’Brien’s accomplishments. He lists several of his works and sees the connection so many of them hold, the Vietnam War. When Smith asks O’Brien about his writing style he answers, “For me, a good story embraces both the ordinary and the extraordinary. I'm not interested in simply holding up a mirror to the world. I'm not interested in reporting on actualities and calling the result fiction. To my taste, a good story is a mix of the so-called real world and a much more mysterious and elusive interior world we all live in.”(Answer 6) Near the end of the interview he asked O’Brien to give advice to new writers and he answers with this, “I might also suggest that a writer pay close attention to his or her own life. Don't avoid your own passions and fears.”(Answer 15) This is truly the way in which O’Brien writes.
9.) Smith, Roger. “Tim O’Brien.” Critical Survey of Long Fiction, Fourth Edition, January 2010, pp. 1-5. EBSCOhost.
This article is another attempt to understand why O’Brien uses his personal experiences and blurs the lines of his novels between fiction and non-fiction. After listing several achievements and a short biography, Smith uses the analytical process to dig deeper into several of O’Brien’s works. He states that, “The novels are intimately personal, psychological, and exploratory.” (Smith) O’Brien uses his personal experiences to give his stories depth and real life situations that the reader could possibly look up if they so desired. I think this is one of the reasons for O’Brien writing the way he does. He doesn’t just want to broaden our scoop of literature but educate the reader on the events in Vietnam during the war.
10.) “War.” Webster’s Large Print Dictionary: For Home, School & Office. Chesapeake, PA. Kappa, 2015. Print.
I will use this definition in my essay to lay the ground work for my ideas. War is something that is on O’Brien’s mind each and every time he writes and I think that having the definition of war in my essay will add to understanding of that. “War-State of using violence against another; a contest of force between states.” (251) I feel that in understanding what war is, we can understand what O’Brien is trying to tell his readers.
Tim O’Brien’s work in The Things They Carried and his other stories have done a great job of telling fictional stories using real life events and circumstances. These ten sources are the ones that have been the greatest in helping me research and understand the way the O’Brien writes and his focus on the Vietnam War or the reasons behind why Lt. Jimmy Cross’ character loses his focus in The Things They Carried.
In both of the articles by Jack Smith and Julie Ooms I have found some great examples as to why O’Brien keeps his focus on the Vietnam War through so much of his writing. There is a clearer understanding of why he writes the way he does and why he has kept the war in the forefront of his mind throughout most of his works. In the article by Roger Smith he links this reasoning to the intimate and personal reasons for O’Brien’s stories.
Within the two articles by Michael Clark and Steven Kaplan I found so more reasoning for Lt. Jimmy Cross’s focus and why O’Brien picked this character to depict this trait. Kaplan explains that nothing about the war is really clear to us unless you lived through it no matter how great O’Brien narration is. Because of this, O’Brien has put so much effort into seeing that we as readers understand what these men when through as best as we can.
John Marciano’s article entitled, “Lessons from the Vietnam War” and Mathew Burke’s article, “The Things They Buried” are both a link to the American population during that time of war. Seeing how not only the American public but also the American government did and still do react to the war is interesting. I also wanted to include the definition of war in my essay and I am using the Webster’s dictionary to do that. I feel that this source is linked to all the other sources as each one has something to do with the Vietnam War.
I also wanted to use our textbook to get direct quotes from the story “The Things They Carried” to help back up my thesis and main ideas. I feel that the website I used with the interview conducted by Josephine Reed of Tim O’Brien and his biography links well to the story from our textbook as well as each of the other sources as well. Learning even more pieces to O’Brien’s background gives me a better understanding of his writing and his intention with his literary works.
Annotated and Analyzed Sources
1.) Burke, Mathew M. “The Things They Buried.” Newsweek Global, vol.168, no. 4, 03 Feb.2017, pp.36-45. EBSCOhost.
This article is about the cover up of three US soldiers that went missing at the end of the Vietnam War. I want to use this as part of my essay to explain how the American public and the American government saw the war from here and how the soldiers had to see the war from there. There is a big difference in hearing about the war and living through it. This also correlates with the way that Martha and Cross speak to one another and the way that each of them views the war.
2.) Clarke, Michael, Travel. “I Fell Close to Myself.” Solipsism and US Imperialism in Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried.” College Literature, vol. 40, no.2, Spring2013, pp.130-154. EBSCOhost.
This essay is a reflection on the literary work of the The Things They Carried. It uses examples from the text to back up the ideas that O’Brien uses his works to examine the war closer and make sure that he nor anyone else is free from the responsibility and the guilt of what happened there. The essay speaks a little about Cross’ character in the story. “The central narrative of the destruction of Than Khe is quickly displaced and repressed by the more trivial story of Lt. Cross's unrequited love for Martha.”(141) The focus of the story and how it continues to return to Cross’ lack of focus is one of my main ideas. “The story of Lt. Cross is about the errors of judgment that result from too much concentration on the self. Lt. Cross believes his daydreams about Martha lead directly to the death of Ted Lavender.”(141) This is a perfect example of the way Cross feels about his focus.
3.) Kaplan, Steven. “The Undying Uncertainty of the Narrator in Tim O’Brien’s ‘The Things They Carried’.” CRITIQUE: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, no. 1, 1993, p. 43. EBSCOhost.
This article is about the narration of The Things They Carried and how that relates to Tim O’Brien’s mentality about the Vietnam War both during the war and when he wrote the story. Kaplan explains that O’Brien’s story cannot give any real definition to war and what happens because you would have had to live it to understand it. “Almost all of the literature on the war, both fictional and nonfictional, makes clear that the only certain thing during the Vietnam War was that nothing was clear.”(Kaplan) This article is a great way of seeing the war and the story through a different perspective.
4.) Marciano, John. “Lessons from the Vietnam War.” Monthly Review: An Independent Socialist Magazine, vol. 68, no.7, Dec. 2016, pp. 43-51. EBSCOhost.
This article will be useful to my essay as I use quotes from the article to support by idea that O’Brien writes about the Vietnam War and focuses so much of his literary works on that war to explain to the American people what happened during that time. It is hard for anyone to imagine what war is like. The American population during that time only had the news media as the primary source of information about the war. This article explains several things that we learned from the war and lists a few misconceptions as well.
5.) O’Brien, Tim. “The Things They Carried.” Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing, Compact Edition. Ed Edgar V. Roberts and Robert Zweig. 6th ed. Boston: Pearson. 2015. Print.
I believe that using the examples from our textbook will be a great way to support my essay’s thesis and main ideas. The story, The Things They Carried, is the base for my essay after all. There are many things that I could use from this portion of our textbook and I plan to make use of it for my essay about Tim O’Brien and his focus on the Vietnam War and why he wanted Lt. Jimmy Cross in his story to be so unfocused.
6.) Ooms, Julie.“Battles Are Always Fought Among Human Beings, Not Purposes.” Tim O’Brien’s Fiction as A Response to the Crisis of Modernity.” Renascence, vol. 66, no. 1, Winter2014, pp.25-45. ESBCOhost
Julie Ooms writes this article about the reasoning behind O’Brien’s literary works. She looks into several of his works including The Things They Carried and Going After Cacciato. Within the first paragraph of the article she does state that although O’Brien’s work is fiction it “attempts to tell the true story” (Pg 25) There is a quote from a 1994 New York Times special entitled "The Vietnam in Me.” Written by O’Brien and Ooms says this of it, “O'Brien points out here that the evils of the Vietnam War are not merely forgotten, but all but deleted from American mythology and memory…”(Pg 26) Ooms is stating that the reasoning for O’Brien’s literary work to be so focused on the Vietnam War is to give the people who fought in that war a voice and something tangible to hold onto that says, we remember, I remember. You are not alone.
7.) Reed, Josephine. “NEA Big Read.” NEA Big Read. N.p., 23 Nov. 2008. Web. 28 Mar. 2017
Complete URL: http://www.neabigread.org/books/thethingstheycarried/readers-guide/about-the-author/
This source is useful to me and my essay because it gives me a little background into O’Brien’s past while he served in the Vietnam War. It gives me a good example of what he went through while he was there. “O'Brien spent his tour of duty from 1969 to 1970 as a foot soldier with the 46th Infantry in Quang Ngai province. For some of that time he was stationed in My Lai, just one year after the infamous My Lai Massacre. He was sent home with a Purple Heart when he got hit with shrapnel in a grenade attack.”(neabigread.org) This is just one example from the website that looks into O’Brien’s time in Vietnam and I think this will add my essay’s main idea about his focus on the war.
8.) Smith, Jack. “The Things He Carries: For Tim O’Brien, the Vietnam War Has Remained A Crucible in His Fiction, but the Power of Imagination and Memory, and our Elusive Interior Worlds, ‘Loom Large. Too.” Writer (Kalmbach Publishing Co.), vol. 123, no. 7, July 2010, pp.16-47. EBSCOhost.
Jack Smith, using the format of an interview, gets to the bottom of several burning questions to Tim O’Brien. It is easy to see the ease the men have with one another and the admiration that Smith has for O’Brien. He first lists several of O’Brien’s accomplishments. He lists several of his works and sees the connection so many of them hold, the Vietnam War. When Smith asks O’Brien about his writing style he answers, “For me, a good story embraces both the ordinary and the extraordinary. I'm not interested in simply holding up a mirror to the world. I'm not interested in reporting on actualities and calling the result fiction. To my taste, a good story is a mix of the so-called real world and a much more mysterious and elusive interior world we all live in.”(Answer 6) Near the end of the interview he asked O’Brien to give advice to new writers and he answers with this, “I might also suggest that a writer pay close attention to his or her own life. Don't avoid your own passions and fears.”(Answer 15) This is truly the way in which O’Brien writes.
9.) Smith, Roger. “Tim O’Brien.” Critical Survey of Long Fiction, Fourth Edition, January 2010, pp. 1-5. EBSCOhost.
This article is another attempt to understand why O’Brien uses his personal experiences and blurs the lines of his novels between fiction and non-fiction. After listing several achievements and a short biography, Smith uses the analytical process to dig deeper into several of O’Brien’s works. He states that, “The novels are intimately personal, psychological, and exploratory.” (Smith) O’Brien uses his personal experiences to give his stories depth and real life situations that the reader could possibly look up if they so desired. I think this is one of the reasons for O’Brien writing the way he does. He doesn’t just want to broaden our scoop of literature but educate the reader on the events in Vietnam during the war.
10.) “War.” Webster’s Large Print Dictionary: For Home, School & Office. Chesapeake, PA. Kappa, 2015. Print.
I will use this definition in my essay to lay the ground work for my ideas. War is something that is on O’Brien’s mind each and every time he writes and I think that having the definition of war in my essay will add to understanding of that. “War-State of using violence against another; a contest of force between states.” (251) I feel that in understanding what war is, we can understand what O’Brien is trying to tell his readers.