The Man of Exile

Chen, Tina. "'Unraveling the Deeper Meaning': Exile and the Embodied Poetics of Displacement in Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried." Contemporary Literature 39.1 (1998): 77-98. MLA International Bibliography. EBSCO. Web. 10 Dec. 2010.

Tina Chen addresses the idea that exile inflects all the aspects of the stories in “The Things They Carried”. She expresses exile as the “inescapable experience resulting from the immersion in the moral ambiguity of the Vietnam War” (80). Chen states that if the reader carefully reads “The Things They Carried” they will find that these stories are not about recovering from disasters or solving the conflicts that were caused by the war. Yet, Chen claims these stories are about learning to live with Vietnam and not through it. O’Brien is exiled from his friends, himself, and even though he was in Vietnam, he was exiled from there as well. Chen discusses the idea that the fear of exile is placed throughout this book’s entirety, but for example in “On the Rainy River” when Tim thought about fleeing to Canada, but one thing held him back. In “On the Rainy River”, Tim said that he “feared the war, yes, but I also feared exile” (O’Brien 48). In this article, Chen states that “home for the exile is the place of origin, or belonging” (83) and she describes O’Brien as a displaced writer with “no ease, no sanctuary, no native place to which to return”(83). She states that deeper than just a jumble of series of stories, “The Things They Carried” is a book about the need to tell stories, the ways the tell stories, and the reasons for telling stories.

No connection can be made or sought out about between O’Brien’s idea on truth and his value on storytelling until faced with information on his purpose. Chen’s point of view provides a de a deeper understanding or reasoning behind O’Brien’s purpose in story telling as a whole. The emotional sense that Chen uses allows the reader to think more into the ideas of feelings and emotions when trying to depict O’Brien’s reasoning on the importance of storytelling. By reading this source, the reading is now faced with ideas and information about the level of emotion O’Brien was going through during Vietnam. This point of view brings light to the fact that yes, O’Brien may have had some religious motivation when writing these stories, but emotions and fears may have also placed a role in O’Brien’s reasoning behind storytelling. This source is important because it allows the reader to create either a stronger connection to O’Brien and his thoughts or a bit of separation from him.