Abstract

Guilt and blame are two significant thematic concerns for Tim O’Brien in his Vietnam war novels Going After Cacciato and The Things They Carried. However, both novels depict characters who interact with a vibrant world of ambient things which have a remarkable ability to effect change and influence the actions of the humans who nominally control them. Under the theoretical rubric of Object-Oriented Ontology, this project challenges the uniqueness of human agency in the world while also considering the dubiousness of assigning singular blame and responsibility to human agents acting within a network of causal actors. While the majority of readings of O’Brien take a post-colonial position or investigate the author’s construction of truth through metafictional literary practices, this approach takes a broader view of O’Brien’s literary world, and the place of the human agent within it.