Postmodernism In The Things They Carried, By Tim O Brien

What we define as “modernism” has a lot to do with the English literature movement among fictional writing — roughly between 1910 and 1960. Most modernist literature globalized with the revolution of new technology and the post dramatic events of World War I. The movement ultimately made people question the fate and future of humanity, wondering what was soon to become of the world. A few fearless writers, much like that of Tennessee Williams or Tim O’Brien reacted to the question of “what’s to become of our world” by turning to some new age, modernist values. While the romantic period focused much more on human nature, free-will and being, a more modernist outlook spoke of the consciousness and inner-self. Towards the end of this impressionable era (nineteenth and twentieth centuries), Williams wrote a play called A Streetcar Named Desire, which was ultimately considered a trademark modernist work. O’Brien, however was well known for his controversial novel, The Things they Carried, which was classified as “postmodern” after the Vietnam War. Interestingly enough, a closer look at the conceptual value of modernism and postmodernism can provide us with a deeper understanding of the novels and the movement that was at hand.
The novel is best understood supporting the aspects of metafiction and an arrangement of facts and fiction — all of which are used throughout other examples of postmodern literature. The Vietnam War was the most critical event and conflict that altered our societal view from modern to “post modern” after the people learned what war was really about. Through a reflective “biography” (that wasn’t really a biography) Tim O’Brien showed the readers, and the people about the brutal reality of war, the experience and opened our eyes to the bigger problem at