Content area
Full Text
In contrast to the spirited debate over Tim O'Brien's representation of women, relatively little controversy has existed over the subject of US imperialism in his work.1 Few critics have addressed the topic head-on, and the handful of scholars who have discussed it criticize O'Brien on similar grounds. No vigorous defense of this aspect of his work has emerged as it has in response to feminist critiques. The aim of this essay is to respond to criticisms of O'Brien's work that consis- tently claim its ethnocentric solipsism reinforces American imperialism.
One of the few explorations of the topic of imperialism in O'Brien's work is Katherine Kinney's essay on Going After Cacciato, originally published in Ameri- can Literary History.2 Kinney argues that O'Brien's novel delicately probes the idea of America as an imperialist nation, but ultimately suppresses that knowledge in large part through its solipsism. Like many Vietnam narratives obsessed with the war's effects on the US-an obsession that "reduces the Vietnamese to bit play- ers," in Kinney's words-the trope of friendly fire in the novel (the central story of the fragging of Lt. Martin by his platoon) denies that imperialism is about doing something to other people. Instead, imperialism is made to look like something Americans do to themselves, a problem primarily for Americans (1995, 634).
Renny Christopher agrees. Her book The Viet Nam War/The American War (1995) claims that Going After Cacciato is typical of the ethnocentrism of American narra- tives of the Vietnam War. Because the novel remains resolutely couched within a US perspective and because O'Brien lacks knowledge about Vietnamese poli- tics, history, and motivations, Cacciato depicts the war as one primarily between Americans, or even as a battle within the individual American soldier's conscious- ness. This drastically minimizes the Vietnamese role in the war. The result, in Christopher's view, is "a deeply apolitical novel" with stereotypical Vietnamese characters and an inscrutable Vietnam (1995, 234).
Jen Dunnaway concurs with both critics in her essay in the Arizona Quarterly. She argues that Vietnam War literature written by Americans tends to be solipsis- tic, portraying the war as a conflict among and about Americans. She is particularly interested in the role of the Native American Kiowa in O'Brien's The Things They Carried. She argues that...