The Importance Of Metafiction As A Literary Device In The Things They Carried
The Vietnam War was a period of history in which some great pieces of fiction were created. The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien is a great example of one of these pieces of fiction. A big part of this novel was O'Brien's theme of metafiction. Metafiction is a type of fiction that self-consciously addresses the devices of fiction. This in another sense means that metafiction is the act of writing about writing. This literary device is used in The Things They Carried, as O'Brien's method to systematically remind his readers that the stories that he is telling are fiction but that sometimes stories can be more real than reality itself.
O'Brien explains the concept of stories and what role they serve to the storyteller at the end of one of the chapters in The Things They Carried. "Forty-three years old, and the war occurred half a lifetime ago, and yet the remembering makes it now. And sometimes remembering will lead to a story, which makes it forever. That's what stories are for.......
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Approximate Word Count: 845
Approximate Pages: 4 (250 words per double-spaced page)
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