You're Kidding, Right?

I AM SO OVER POSTMODERNISM. I feel like we're just talking in circles and about it. I cannot wait for it to be finally over. Anyway, I guess I should move along into my blog. This is bound to be bad. I'm dead. But whatever, here it goes...

I think that the main point that the author is trying to make is that The Things They Carried major weakness is that it is only from O'Brien's perspective. The reality portrayed in the book is actually just O'Brien's mind. The reader has to no way to know for a fact if everything he says is "true". This whole subject of truth is hard because we have to take what O'Brien says as the truth. And this is what Neilson is arguing against.

Okay, so along the lines of truth I think that Neilson is trying to say that the "truth" is actually bent and twisted in The Things They Carried to make the war seem stronger in some ways. Not that O'Brien is trying to mislead us on purpose, I just think that he is trying to show that O'Brien has to change the truth to make us, the general American public, try to feel what the soldiers felt in the war. In the words of Donald Ringnalda, "the war does not fit within the tidy perimeters of the ethnocentric, traditional war narrative" ("Doing" 68). Vietnam was such a different type of war and I think that O'Brien's bending of the truth is his way of trying to get people to understand this brand new type of combat.

The most insightful thing that I learned from the article is probably the way that Neilson really does not want agree with O'Brien. I thought it was really interesting to think about it from a different perspective. That's about it...

I agree with Neilson's criticism to a certain extent. And I see why he makes the argument that he does but I also understand what O'Brien was getting at and I think that I agree with that more.

Okay, so this is kinda a confusing blog. Sorry about that. I have it in my mind...Just trying to get it down on paper or the Internet or whatever is a little difficult.

PEACE.