The CEA Forum - Winter/Spring 2008 - Reading and Understanding: Tim O'Brien and the Narrative of Failure

Oct 15, 2026

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The essay examines Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried as a “narrative of failure,” describing how the work fails as narrative performance while also making failure its thematic subject. Instead of conventional closure, it argues that endless supplementation blurs narrative point and contextual meaning, repeatedly inviting readers to re-tell the story. Drawing on Ross Chambers and other critics, it emphasizes episodic repetition, seriality, and the subversion of truth measured by factual occurrence, especially in relation to war-story emotional truth.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryLiterature

FormatPDF

Pages6

Reading Time9 min

AccessFree to download

Reading and Understanding

Narrative of failure and endless supplementation

Loiterature, episodic repetition, and seriality

Emotional truth versus factual truth in war stories

The CEA Forum Winter/Spring 2008: 37.1 Next: The Undergraduate in the Academic Library READING AND UNDERSTANDING: TIM O'BRIEN AND THE NARRATIVE OF FAILURE Jeffrey Buchanan Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried is an example of what I call a narrative of failure. A narrative of failure is a term for a narrative that both fails as narrative􀳦that is, that fails in the enactment of its own telling􀳦and a narrative that thematizes failure􀳦that is, that takes failure or failing as one of its subjects. Narratives of failure fail to fulfill conventional expectations for narratives; as a result, they suggest alternative ways of reading and promote alternative values, values marginalized by disciplinary practices of reading and writing. Among the attributes that make The Things They Carried a narrative of failure are: its unwillingness, as narrative, to adhere to conventional distinctions between truth and fiction and among author, narrator, and character; O'Brien's narrator's frequent failure to 􀳦get the story right􀳦; and the failures recounted in the plots of many of its stories􀳦Norman Bowker failing to save Kiowa, for example, or the main character's failure in 􀳦On the Rainy River􀳦 to act and escape to Canada. But, in this essay, I take the failure of O'Brien's stories to conclude conventionally, to come to rest or settle as narratives, as my central focus. Their failure to make a point􀳦their inability to deliver on the promises they pledge and conclude􀳦necessitates a seemingly endless supplementation, the effect of which is, as Ross Chambers observes about narratives more generally, the blending of the story's content with its context (Story 3) . In this way, it becomes difficult for readers to distinguish between a narrative point (what a story says) and a contextual one (what a story means) . This blurring is so sustained in O'Brien's work that the narrative and contextual points seem constantly adrift. Consequently, the purpose of each story seems to be predicated on the desire to create, with any one telling, an occasion to tell the story again, as if every telling is necessarily a failed one. Yet the fact that O'Brien's stories successfully fail, again and again, gives them an alternative purpose every bit as productive as a more conventional one. In Loiterature, Chambers describes stories that rely on an 􀳦episodic􀳦 and 􀳦repetitive􀳦 narrative structure where a conventional sense of closure is 􀳦irrelevant􀳦 (252); these characteristics, he argues, qualify them as "loiterature."Further, he notes that their repetition is 􀳦digressive,􀳦 in the sense that each subsequent iteration 􀳦implies difference􀳦 (252) . The goal of these stories, Chambers writes, isn't the narrative or argumentative one of comprehension but the encyclopedic one of comprehensiveness, not synthesis but seriality [ . . .] The outcome is a text structured like a list, an enumeration, an inventory or a catalog, a 􀳦telling􀳦 in the etymological sense of counting out, and corresponding more to a purely descriptive practice of notation than to an art of composition. (252) The primary goal of O'Brien's stories, I wish to suggest, is also not comprehension because there is no simple or single point of understanding to take away from the experience of the Vietnam War. To comprehend it is impossible as each investigative thread multiplies and digresses rather than summates and concludes. What might be more productive than an attempt at synthesis and conclusion, O'Brien's stories suggest, is to place as many of the threads as possible on the table and to describe how the process of weaving them together starts them also to unravel. One conventional narrative thread O'Brien unravels in The Things They Carried is the valuing of literal truth over emotional truth. O'Brien says that 􀳦a story's truth shouldn't be measured by whether what is reported actually happened or not but by an entirely different standard, a standard of emotion, feeling􀳦 (Naparsteck 10-1

FAQs

What does the essay mean by “a narrative of failure”?

It refers to narratives that fail in how they enact their own telling and that also treat failure as a central subject. In O’Brien’s work, this undermines conventional expectations for narrative reading and values.

How does endless supplementation function in O’Brien’s stories?

The essay argues that failures to “make a point” or reach settled narrative conclusions require seemingly endless additions. This blending makes it difficult to separate what a story says from what it means.

How does the essay connect O’Brien’s war stories to ideas of truth?

It highlights O’Brien’s preference for emotional truth over happening-truth, noting statements about instinct and “making the stomach believe.” The analysis also discusses how O’Brien later qualifies or contradicts whether events occurred.

Oct 15, 2026

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