Being Tim O'Brien

The difference between character/narrator "Tim O'Brien" and author Tim O'Brien, are very slim to none. I’m I'm pretty sure that Tim O'Brien as an author experienced these advants in Vietnam and he turned in something to a character to describe it in more detail for us to share those horrific experiences of death while he was away and while he was home when he was little. His whole point of view is to focus on celebrating death celebrating when the people were living. That was how he found his peace of death. The repetition of dialogue and imagery is very obvious and apparent throughout the narration of both Tim’s  short stories I have read. Mr O’Brien narrator in a I form which is considered first person, biography, but, nonetheless, interpreted as fictional turning himself as a fictional character. The repetition lines when he talks about death and Wars specially the Vietnam War but um asleep those 2 themes. He also mentions love within us it is stories as he connects his first experience of death with his first earliest experiences of love with a girl named Linda. The other repetition I have noticed is his empathy, compassion, guilt, shame and sincerity for the people he witnessed dying and the people, some even innocent, that he had to kill. There also is similar repetition throughout both story signifying Tim is trying to make sense out of the young boy soldier's death, Linda, and other situational traumas that have occurred and rationalize/questions his life’s purpose. There are many strategies for coping that a patent through Tim O'Brien's writings and both stories, for instance: the advent of the life of the Vietnamese youth AND the use/placement of Linda in a war story. O’Brien’s narration, as a character, took empathy to a whole different level, as he literally put himself in the boy’s shoes and fixate on what the boy’s life could be if he didn't die.  As with Linda he coped with it as not only his first experience of love, and why life is meant living, but how people of any age could die, and life is not permanent. It was a loss of innocence for Tim O’Brien the moments where he coped with Linda, his first love and tragically his first death, a death of an innocent, who did not instigate this upon her unlike the deaths of Ted Lavender, Curt Lemon, and Kiowa. The word if the day is Metafiction meaning the psychological meaning of storytelling (the author discussing the process of fictionalizing while telling the story) which appeared amongst the narrations of both stories. That is a very psychological maneuver on his behalf. Who knows if he really went to war and experienced all this but he convinced me by the way he wrote his stories by storytelling it in and as first person, the experience, perspective. It was extremely clever the way he constructed his short stories, I enjoyed reading it. He has tendencies to rationalize and make sense of his life and his true purpose. Re: Being Tim O'Brien by Tara Hall - Saturday, November 3, 2012, 10:53 PM Great job. Very detailed and in depth. I agree that his first love was a loss of innocence. Re: Being Tim O'Brien by Sonia Caceres - Sunday, November 4, 2012, 02:51 PM Alissa, Good anlaysis! I agree with you that O'Brien is very much like his characters. Also that this character is a way for him to tell his personal experiences and be able to cope. Re: Being Tim O'Brien by Shelby Haffey - Sunday, November 4, 2012, 07:11 PM I agree with you that there seems to be no difference between the narrator and Tim O'Brien himself. The only thing that is different is that he is in control of what he writes and what the narrator is feeling and thinking and showing to the readers. Very in depth and detailed analysis! Re: Being Tim O'Brien by Clara Herrarte - Tuesday, December 4, 2012, 05:30 AM Alissa, I LOVE the way you point out the loss of innocence. There is definitely a parallel between those two deaths and the gravity of the loss of innocence in each. -Clara