Rotating back to the world : an analysis of two Vietnam War memoirs
- UNCW Author/Contributor (non-UNCW co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
- Stephanie N. Jones (Creator)
- Institution
- The University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW )
- Web Site: http://library.uncw.edu/
- Advisor
- Cara Cilano
Abstract: This thesis is an exploration of two Vietnam War memoirs through an
autobiographical lens. Tim O’Brien’s If I Die in a Combat Zone Box Me Up and Send
Me Home and Tobias Wolff’s In Pharaoh’s Army: Memories of the Lost War are both
narratives written by veteran/authors that lend themselves to the changing and new voice
of all veteran authors.
By re-visioning and exploring these texts as autobiographies the genre of war
literature becomes available to all veterans and soldiers. This exploration does not try to
qualify whether or not the stories of these two men are historically accurate, but instead
examines the historical, narrated, and narrating “I.” In this way the text is available in
terms of agency, authenticity, evidence, experience, and memory, among others. By
using autobiographical theory as a means of analysis, the reading of the text moves away
from traditional forms of “interpretation” to explore the texts in terms of the nonlinear,
postmodern, and pioneering manner in which they were written.
In foregrounding history, establishing facts and statistics, and limiting the
discussion of political and moral right and wrong, the texts are significant for being the
life narratives of Vietnam veterans. This thesis and these books are not generalizations
of the war, but an emphasis of one man’s story in the hopes that it will inspire other men
and women of the Vietnam era to write their own. It is also necessary to read these
stories in terms of autobiography so that when the new veteran emerges from the
conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq they will have a model in which to follow and a voice
that is not only similar to their own, but has forged the way.
Rotating back to the world : an analysis of two Vietnam War memoirs
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Created on 1/1/2009
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Additional Information
- Publication
- Thesis
- A Thesis Submitted to the University of North Carolina Wilmington in Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts
- Language: English
- Date: 2009
- Keywords
- O'Brien Tim If I die in a combat zone box me up and send me home--Criticism and interpretation, Wolff Tobias 1945- In pharaoh' s army: memories of the lost war--Criticism and interpretation
- Subjects
- O'Brien, Tim. If I die in a combat zone box me up and send me home -- Criticism and interpretation
- Wolff, Tobias, 1945- In pharaoh' s army: memories of the lost war -- Criticism and interpretation