The CEA Forum

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.