The Contemporary War Novel
After World War II, dozens of war novels flooded the market as writers returned from the war and chronicled their experiences. These novels dealt with a range of themes, but most tended to be written in a realistic style. They questioned not only the role of authority in the war, but also the ways in which men had been trained to think of concepts such as valor and heroism. Novelists such as James Jones (From Here to Eternity, The Thin Red Line) showed that "the system" was responsible for human violations, but that men, also, through their failure to see the raw truth about the world, through their refusal to let go of romantic ideas about love and heroism, victimized themselves.
In later war novels, these themes persist, but with some changes. Novels such as Joseph Heller's Catch-22 (1961) and Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) focused more on the absurdity of the situations in which the characters found themselves. They satirized everything about war, from the military itself, and by extension the government and any other figure or institution of authority, to the men who found themselves in life- and sanity-threatening situations, and the actions they took to protect themselves.
Another set of novels appeared in response to the Vietnam War, beginning in the early 1970s. These novels have several characteristics which distinguish them from the novels written in the early 60s: they tend to be written in a realistic style, and they avoid satire. Their characters question every assumption about human thought and existence that their characters have been taught, including the reliability of their own senses. Vietnam novels tend to show soldiers caught up in a world which is more than surreal--it seems unreal at times, so that the line between reality and dreaming or imagining is blurred or obliterated altogether. "The system" is nearly invisible. Someone is giving orders somewhere, but these seem to have only the most indirect effect on the day-to-day existence of the soldiers in the field. They move through unfamiliar landscapes with few points of reference, lost or aimless, knowing they are supposed to engage and kill the "enemy," but not having any sense of being a part of something larger. Their predominant emotions seem to be fear, boredom, and isolation. Their physical surroundings are real, but also serve as a metaphor for their inner lives.
The war novels written just after World War II often depicted acts of great heroism; men managed to retain their dignity and their souls despite their surroundings and their experiences. In most Vietnam novels, the destruction of the men's souls is taken for granted; the main concern is to preserve one's sanity. There is very little heroism; most actions that appear heroic are depicted as either the result of a desperate, panicked struggle for survival, or a moment of madness. Seldom is heroism rewarded; a corrupt and invisible system cannot reward men it doesn't see, and medals are a badge of the hypocrisy of those who give the orders. There is a deep anger and bitterness in many of the Vietnam novels.
Another characteristic of contemporary war novels is that many of them focus, not solely on the war, but on the effects of the war on the soldiers after they have returned home. In O'Brien's In the Lake of the Woods, for example, John Wade is no longer in Vietnam, but Vietnam is still in him twenty years later.
Another trend in the contemporary war novel is that some writers are choosing to write about earlier wars, such as World Wars I or II (Pat Barker's Regeneration or Sebastian Faulks' Birdsong, for example) or the Civil War (Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain, for example), but with a post-Vietnam sensibility.
Yet other writers are writing about the aftermath of the Vietnam War by focusing, not on Americans, but the Vietnamese who were affected; Robert Olen Butler's A Good Scent From A Strange Mountain is an example.
And a relatively new trend in war novels written by American writers is to write about wars in which American soldiers are not directly involved. Beasts of No Nation, by Uzodinma Iweala, for example, is a novel about the experiences of a child soldier in West Africa.
The My Lai Massacre
Although John Wade is fictional character, the events that happened at Thuan Yen are not fiction. Thuan Yen was one of a series of villages in an area known as My Lai (pronounced, ironically, as "me lie"); U.S. history has recorded the events there as "the My Lai massacre." The documents footnoted in the novel are actual documents; Lt. William Calley existed and was court-martialed for his participation in the massacre.
Tim O'Brien
For much more information on Tim O'Brien, including a biographical sketch and excerpts from his novels, see Tim O'Brien's Home Page and the other websites listed on the Links page.