| This dissertation examines six major Vietnam War narratives: Norman Mailer's The Armies of the Night; John Del Vecchio's The 13th Valley; James Webb's Fields of Fire; Philip Caputo's A Rumor of War; Michael Herr's Dispatches; and Tim O'Brien's Going After Cacciato. Despite differing narrative modes, each work demonstrates a similar vision: one espousing a need, on both personal and national levels, to re-orient, re-unify, and reconnect. Devoting a chapter to each narrative, this study explores the author's structural and rhetorical vision of potential continuities.;On a second level, the narrators ask the reader to examine the war's causes and consequences for the nation. Mailer's narrator educates the reader to question both private and public histories, and historians. Del Vecchio examines historical understanding. Webb's montage of personal histories expands to a narrative about storytelling itself. Caputo, like Mailer, becomes an exemplar of our nation's society. Herr, like Mailer, questions historical knowledge but affirms its necessity. O'Brien creates, in part, an historical allegory which suggests our international politics. As on the personal level, the vision becomes one of potential re-orientation.;Without looking away from war's hardships, without romanticizing combat, these narratives affirm the need for personal and national reconnections. Appropriately, the narrative endings convey not closure but openness, not finality but the potential for recovery.;The protagonists, initially, are troubled, alone, confused. Their personal disorientation occurs primarily for two reasons: the psychological distortion of time's passage in stress-producing situations; and the policy of individual rotation to a Vietnam tour for a specified time, usually twelve months. Without emphasizing temporal disorientation, Mailer's autobiography provides a paradigm of the soldier's experience: induction for a specified period; a fragmented "war"; a search for order; subsequent time of remembering and reflection. Del Vecchio's realistic novel dramatizes both combat and tour time. Webb's emphasizes temporal endings in the serious game of war. Caputo's autobiography stresses the elongation of time. Herr's reportage conveys temporal fragmentation. O'Brien's novel dramatizes the search for temporal order and control. The protagonists, partially transcending their personal disorientation, become survivors who learn a commitment to community. |
