On Robert Stone And Tim O'Brien: American Fiction Of The Vietnam War Within And Beyond

A new literary genre-American Vietnam War literature has steadfastly found its way into American literature since the early 1970s, The genre mainly consists of poetry, drama, fiction and memoirs. Writers of this genre take the Vietnam War and other aspects concerning the war as subject matters and themes of their works. They not only describe the Vietnam War itself, American society before and during the Vietnam War, but also depict America after the war as well as the great effect of the war upon many spectra of American society. Their achievements in thematic and artistic representations are gaining more and more attraction from scholars both in the United States and in China.In this genre fictional works are undoubtedly more important than the other three kinds in number and in artistic achievement. The novels written by Michael Herr, Philip Caputo, Larry Heinemann, Robert Stone, Tim O'Brien and some other novelists are among the classics of American literature. Out of the writers, Robert Stone and Tim O'Brien are the most outstanding in the depth and width of their thematic creation. Meanwhile, their different writing styles-Stone's neorealism and O'Brien's postmodernism in the main embody the two major narrative devices of contemporary American fiction.So far, Robert Stone and rim O'Brien have been regarded as two famous American novelists. American scholars have written quite a few articles on the novels written by Stone and O'Brien, particularly on their masterpieces-Stone's Dog Soldiers, O'Brien's Going After Cacciato and The Things They Carried. But it seems that the scholars have been showing major concern with the themes of Stone's A Hall of Mirrors and A Flag for Sunrise as well as Dog Soldiers, and they have seldom touched upon Dog Soldiers's and other novels' writing techniques as a whole. In contrast, the scholars have mostly analyzed the postmodernist techniques of O'Brien's two masterpieces but have seldom mentioned the themes of the above two and other novels. Furthermore, the scholars have seldom conducted an overall study of Stone and O'Brien, and even not made a comparative study of their works. In China, the number of articles about the two writers' novels is much less than that in the United States. The method and field of research of the Chinese scholars almost bear the resemblance to those of the American scholars.This dissertation-ON ROBERT STONE AND TIM O'BRIEN:AMERICAN FICTION OF THE VIETNAM WAR WITHIN AND BEYOND for the first time makes a rather systematic and comparative study of the novels of the Vietnam War written by Robert Stone and Tim O'Brien. The study focuses on the comparison and contrast of most of their works in themes and artistic techniques so as to define the general characteristics of Vietnam War literature as well as the idiosyncrasies of the two writers.The dissertation falls into six parts.The Introduction gives an overall picture of American Vietnam War literature and the present status of research into the genre both in the United States and in China.Then, it narrows down to the introduction to Robert Stone and Tim O'Brien. The dissertation primarily points out that the two writers not only depict American society before and during the Vietnam War, but also portray America after the war, particularly the effect of the war imposed upon America, upon American psyche, society, politics, culture and life. Furthermore, the United States in their works is delineated to be identical in several aspects with Viet Nam in the Vietnam War and the war itself through the comparison of their internal similar elements. Stone and O'Brien in the main employ neorealistic and postmodernist techniques respectively in order to effectively convey those themes. With regard to the fact that the study of American Vietnam War literature is slow and insufficient in China, including the study of Stone and O'Brien of course, the dissertation attempts to introduce the Chinese readers to such an important literary genre, and more important, to let them gain a panorami...