Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried": Postmodern Fiction for a Postmodern War

By Laurence R. Kowalewski - In the western history of human existence the event, idea, and act of war stands totemic in the landscape. Borders both physical and mental have been defined by its threat and execution, and its aura hangs heavily over the last century as the bloodiest in the entire narrative of humanity.[1] During a period widely considered to be the most perfect example of the efficient, mechanised destruction of life—the Holocaust—David Rousset gave a name to the experience he saw inside the internment camps as “l’univers concentrationnaire,” a world apart.[2] This succinct explanation...