Hmm...

So here I go with this particular blog. I guess what I really want to say first is that this article was a little bit long for my taste so it was a little difficult for me to stay focused on it. Anyway, I guess the gist of Jim Neilson’s argument is that O’Brien’s The Things They Carried is a very one-sided point of view of the war. Neilson criticizes the book on how little it really relates to the war. “O'Brien does not contextualize his experience, does not provide us with any deeper understanding of the causes and consequences of this war, and does not see beyond his individual experience to document the vastly greater suffering of the Vietnamese.” He wants the book to be based more on historical facts and the full experience of the war form both sides: Vietnamese and American. However, sadly enough O’Brien’s is bases purely on the stories (true or not) that he remembers during his time in Vietnam. All of the little stories described are either from his own experiences or from the experiences gained by the members of his unit. “However sympathetic his reconstruction of an enemy soldier's life, though, O'Brien consistently undercuts it by emphasizing textual artifice…” even though O’Brien did mention a Vietnamese for a little while, Neilson still feels that he is only doing to prove his own point and not for the Vietnamese individual. It is obvious that Neilson truly disagrees with how O’Brien has reconstructed the war in his stories. For all the pain that the war has caused him, it seems as though O’Brien feels little pity for the county/people it also affected besides himself. Also in the article, Neilson tries to explain how The Things They Carried has so much postmodernism in it and I think he does a great job in doing so. He points out all the reasons why and why not the novel is postmodern which I think will help me a lot on the essay. Anyway I guess I’m xong for now. =]]

Ps. Xong is Viet for finished if you haven’t figured yet xP