The Lavishments of Light Looking

Well

.. It’s no question that Maus and The Things They Carried share very similar methods of story telling. The first thing to note would be how both authors are actually main characters within the works. They both are considered semi-autobiographical and toy with meta-fiction. In The Things They Carried Tim O’ Brien portrays himself as a forty year old writer and vet with only minor differences between the narrator and author. Art Spiegelman plays himself as a young man telling the story of his fathers past.

I really enjoyed the part in Maus when Spiegelman’s father, Vladek, interrupted his storytelling and screamed at Spiegelman not to put the part about Lucia in his story. It reminded me of when Norman Bowker asked Tim O’ Brien not to use his real name when writing “Speaking of Courage” or when Jimmy Cross asked O’Brien not mention anything about Martha in his story. Both works let their characters do half the narrating and it’s a very interesting, and sometimes blurry way to read a book. Maus is biographical when Vladek tells his experiences throughout the holocaust, but flips to autobiography in the moments when Art Spiegelman details his relationship with his father. I would say Tim O’Brien toys with the whole meta-fiction theme a lot more in The Things They Carried to keep toying with the reader’s perception. I always felt the need to remind myself who’s actually telling the story, Tim O’Brien or Tim O’Brien?

Ok I definitely got a little sidetracked here with the whole meta-fiction theme but hey this coffee tastes amazing. Both works can be considered fiction, non-fiction, autobiographies, or memoirs and that’s super cool.