Traumatic Narratives Of Things In The Things They Carried

As an American writer who experiences the Vietnam War in person,Tim O’Brien has written a lot of classic works whose backgrounds are set in Vietnam.And his novel The Things They Carried is one of the representatives.Things take up a large part of the novel and have a strong presence that cannot be ignored.However,the few researches have focused on things in the novel,and most of them interpret things as the static in the traditional sense.And other functions of things have not received attention.By analyzing the three narrative functions of things in the novel—cultural signs,agency and realism,this thesis examines the psychological trauma of the Vietnam War veterans and the traumatic memory of the United States from the perspective of New Materialism.The thesis first explores the tremendous impact of the Vietnam War on the American veterans and the United States as a nation in which things act as cultural signs,and trauma formed thereby by analyzing patriarchal cultural things on the battlefield,the objectification of women in the military,as well as the loss of the“Silver Star Medal” which has the cultural implication.Then it examines how things move forward the narrative process of the novel and how the soldiers are traumatized due to their moral dilemma in which things show their agency by examining the power of draft notice in recruiting and grenades in killing enemies on the battlefield,as well as the Vietnamese land which have mysterious evil powers that constantly erode soldiers’ bodies and rational thinking.Finally,it interprets the soldiers’ disillusion of faith and the cruelty and absurdity of the Vietnam War and demonstrates the realism of things by examining that the soldiers change the original functions of things on the battlefield.This thesis argues that O’Brien sheds light on the nature of the Vietnam War and the traumas it causes to American society and Vietnam War veterans by representing things,and this embodies the spirit of de-anthropocentrism.And it has great significance for people to re-examine the Vietnam War and the trauma of the veterans.