Ch. 22: The Lives of the Dead
Posted: Fri Nov 07, 2008 9:36 am
Ch. 22: The Lives of the Dead
Please use this thread for discussing this chapter.
Please use this thread for discussing this chapter.
Quality books. Great conversations.
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I think just using Vietnam (Nam) as the setting is politically charged and many stories have been written with the bigger political commentary in mind, so automatically all this is read in to the novel. I think O'Brien is doing just the opposite. He is focusing on the individuals and what it meant to each of them, how bizarre, twisted, meaningless, damaging it was, but on a more individual basis. One way he shows us this by the ironic 'morals' attributed to some of the stories. He is saying, I am not using this as a metanarrative. This is not showing a big truth about life, but just the way it was for some of us. P80'The truths are contradictory'there is a tremendous personal story here but i think there is also a wider political commentary. maybe i see it this way because, as the Vietnam war was ending in the early 1970's this was an issue that caught my attention, so i pick up O'Brien's emphasis on politics..............
O'Brien's genius, i think, goes beyond this ... beyond the standard narrative technique, to metanarrative
This I agree with, at least the individuals, not so much society. I just didn't think it was a political statement about Vietnam which is what I thought you were saying in a previous post. But, yes this is a novel that can be read on many levels and because it is full of short stories, each one of them could have small significance as well as the larger overall theme.is that O'Brien has written a post modern novel and that it is a reflection of how individuals and society ( in this case mostly American society) are coping with the war experience.
But the book is not about Vietnam and not about war, Tim O'Brien said in a telephone interview from his home in Boxford, Mass.
So what's the book about? ''It is a writer's book on the effects of time on the imagination. It is definitely an antiwar book; I hated the war from the beginning. [The book] is meant to be about man's yearning for peace. At least I hope it is taken that way.''
BARTH HEALEY
is what I disagreed with as I did not see this emphasis on politics.so i pick up O'Brien's emphasis on politics..............
I agree with completely.this is a narrative about a war and the individuals that fought in it and how it affected them.
This sheds a lot of light on O'Brien's book, thank you, and I agree it is best to struggle with meanings before finding out what the author "meant". Of course we all bring our own lens to reading and we take away whatever we choose and that is a beautiful thing.realiz wrote:giselleThis I agree with, at least the individuals, not so much society. I just didn't think it was a political statement about Vietnam which is what I thought you were saying in a previous post. But, yes this is a novel that can be read on many levels and because it is full of short stories, each one of them could have small significance as well as the larger overall theme.is that O'Brien has written a post modern novel and that it is a reflection of how individuals and society ( in this case mostly American society) are coping with the war experience.
I did not read anything about O'Brien or comments about this novel before reading it as I this is the way I like to read books. So, today I have read a few reviews and opinions.
This is from an article in the New York Times:
But the book is not about Vietnam and not about war, Tim O'Brien said in a telephone interview from his home in Boxford, Mass.
So what's the book about? ''It is a writer's book on the effects of time on the imagination. It is definitely an antiwar book; I hated the war from the beginning. [The book] is meant to be about man's yearning for peace. At least I hope it is taken that way.''
BARTH HEALEY
They are shadowy figures and their characters are not well developed and I agree they have great significance to the men ... what seems ambiguous is the relationships between the men and the women, perhaps indicating how the emotional baggage that the men carry interferes with their ability to relate to the women, leaving the women as significant in their lives but somehow distant and removed from their lives at the same time. Also, along the lines of the effect of time on the imagination, O'Brien's act of "imagining" these women can result in ambiguity and a shadowy quality, a lack of clear definition as to who they really are ? That's more of a question really, just thinking out loud.realiz wrote:All the women are shadowy figures on the edges of the stories without real identity, but they have great significance in these men's lives.