How to Tell a True War Story | Use of Deconstructive Literary Criticism
In the following essay, the author uses deconstructive literary criticism to examine the ways in which Tim O’Brien simultaneously searches for truth and undermines that quest in his story.
Tim O’Brien was already a successful writer by the time he penned ‘‘How to Tell a True War Story’’ in 1987. In particular, critics had praised his previous novel, Going After Cacciato, for which O’Brien won a National Book Award. This novel opens many of the themes that O’Brien would later explore in The Things They Carried, and particularly in ‘‘How to Tell a True War Story.’’ O’Brien frequently returns to the same themes again and again: truth, imagination, memory, and stories. As many critics have suggested, O’Brien’s work is more about the...
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