The Games They Played: Tim O'Brien and the Ludic Corpse

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2014
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Haverford College. Department of English
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Award
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eng
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Abstract
The deceptive narratorial turns of Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried have caused consternation among some readers and critics. However, these narratorial acts can be rehabilitated when read as a form of play. In Things, play blurs both the line between truth and fiction and the living and the dead. The book also illustrates how play and everyday life are not separate or cordoned off from each other but intertwined and entangled. Much of the play in the book revolves around the object of the corpse and the varying attempts of characters to bring these bodies back to life. The physical play of the soldiers at the site of the corpse briefly resurrects the dead, but serves to ignore the reality of the corpse's death and the consequences of the soldier's actions. On the other hand, the play of the story can be seen as both more effective and ethical. In the story, the dead can come back to life time and again. The play of the narrator also becomes profoundly ethical by giving him the chance to put himself in the shoes of those who he is fighting against and recreate their life, making him more acutely aware of the consequences of his actions and the war.
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