In these two chapters, it seems like the reader gets background information about the narrator but at the same time it feels like it's the author speaking. That's my one qualm with this novel: it's hard to distinguish between the narrator and the author. I feel that it should be the author speaking but it's not and I'm constantly reminded that this is a novel and that what I'm reading isn't necessarily true. Like in 'Good Form' when the narrator tells about the time when he watched someone die in My Khe and he feels guilty because of it but subsequently says "But listen. Even that story is made up." What am I supposed to trust? I get that this novel is supposed to be great and all but reading it further and further, it's just getting annoying with the perpetual storytelling and what is lies and what isn't; what to believe and what not to believe.
In the chapter Field Trip, the narrator takes his young daughter to Vietnam so she can explore the world and such but then he eventually takes her to where Kiowa died. In my opinion, that's really selfish to do because that was a place of strife and struggle and sadness and to expose a child to anything that you yourself harbor ill feelings towards is selfish. Even though Kathleen had no idea what the significance specifically was, it's still not fair. I didn't even know that Tim O'Brien was there when Kiowa died? Maybe I'm overlooking a bigger meaning but I was not impressed with this.
It is hard to distinguish between narrator and author, and perhaps that is O'Brien's intention. You can argue that all fiction is made up of lies; O'Brien's point is that lies have a truth to them. Do you trust that O'Brien is revealing an emotional truth about war? Perhaps that is all that matters.
ReplyDeleteKathleen doesn't want her father to write about war, but that doesn't seem fair either. O'Brien must tell these stories if he is to make sense of his experience.
Keep thinking about this.