Response to Jim Nielson's Essay

In response to this article, I believe that Jim Neilson’s argument is that by writing in the postmodern fashion, Tim O’Brien focuses only on his side of the Vietnam War, and completely ignores the historical facts. For example, Nielson writes that, “In postmodern fashion, The Things They Carried focuses on literary and epistemological preoccupations at the expense both of a Vietnamese perspective and of any broader historical/political understanding.” And, “In this essay I will show that Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried accords with much of the anti-totalizing strains of postmodernism, and I will argue that it is precisely this tendency in his fiction that makes it incapable of opposing the ongoing reconstruction of the war as an American tragedy.” These quotes show that Neilson was too focused on the representation of truth and accounts for what actually happened globally and didn’t necessarily care for the dramatic story of the soldiers fighting everyday to stay alive. I believe that Neilson criticizes O’Brien way too much in this piece because O’Brien is writing his book in his perspective because he is accounting for everything that happened to him and his platoon. Neilson is upset because it doesn’t truly represent an actual account of the Vietnam War, but the thing is this is O’Brien’s personal and real account and the fact is you cannot even compare this novel to a historical account because of the fact that human embellishment, lack of complete understanding, and ignorance will all get in the way of the truth at times. Also Neilson gets jealous of the praise that this novel has received when he says, “Critics and reviewers have lavished much praise upon O'Brien, often asserting that his fiction captures something essential about the nature of the Vietnam War.” I believe that this jealousy comes from the fact that he doesn’t have an amazing story to tell like O’Brien does.