The stories offered for the comparison may seem totally different at first sight. However, the common trait of the two is the motive of empathy, which turns out to be crucial in both.
The famous ‘What if Shakespeare had a sister’ is a part of the essay ‘A Room of One's Own’. In its form the essay presents the dialogue since it originates from the lectures Virginia Woolf gave for women in the Newnham College and Girton College (Goodreads). In her work ‘A Room of One's Own’ Virginia Woolf describes the state of the patriarchic oppression of the generations of women, who were unable to get the space for thought and the freedom, which belonged to them rightfully.
‘The Things They Carried’ by Tim O'Brien is often characterized either as a novel or a collection of short stories. The author himself named it as “a work of fiction.” The story deals with the a of American soldiers in the Vietnam War.
‘A Room of One's Own’ by Virginia Woolf
The theme of empathy finds its place in Virginia Woolf’s classic 1929 essay “A Room of One’s Own”, which contains the part in which the reader is invited to diverge into the musings of the author about the artistic genius of women and the merciless whirl of history. However, it is not solely women that she is being empathetic to. It is hard to define for sure whether it is the genius of the artistic potential that is being subjected to this sympathy of the author or it is the humanity that is deprived of the fruits of the unrealized artistry of the women’s soul.
The narrator, being a woman and an artist herself shows empathy with the Shakespeare’s sister, who was given no room of her own to fulfill her potential and follow the call of her nature. That is not only the tragedy of the one artist, but of each woman bereft of the very essential freedom to follow her will and desires. According to Virginia Woolf the most probable outcome of the Shakespeare’s sister dilemma would be constant blame and mockery, offence, and resentment from the whole world, to which she would be nothing but an alien. Thus, incarcerated in her sex imaginary Shakespeare’s sister would either give up her talent or resort to suicide. The empathy here is delivered from personal experience of the author.
‘The Things They Carried’ by Tim O'Brien
Through the developed organization of the plot Tim O'Brien manages to create the experience of the soldiers carrying the intolerable weight in the jungles of Vietnam more tangible for the reader. It is a compelling read since the image of the war and the struggle of the young men becomes iconic to feel the miseries and hardships of the young men.
The story pertains to the life of the author, owing to which the atmosphere of the deep involvement of the reader with occurring. Vivid descriptions of the wounds and severe injuries, corpses and blood are the vehicle, which draws the reader, who never saw a war in his own eyes, so close to the battle field.
“A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth” is the best author’s description of transmitting the grasp of the circumstances of his characters life (O'Brien, 75). The narrator is both inside the story and outside, switching the third-person point of view to the first one. Failing to fit in the typical narrative story O'Brien critically assesses the circumstances, which he had to encounter during the war. O’Brien creates a true war story in which he writes the following: ‘there is always that surreal seemingness, which makes the story seem untrue, but which in fact represents the hard and exact truth as it seemed (O’Brien, 43). Owing to such reflections the inimitable empathy is gained through the instrumentality of symbols (Bloom, 140).
Overall, comparing the theme of empathy in the work ‘A Room of One's Own’ by Virginia Woolf and ‘The Things They Carried’ by Tim O'Brien certain similarities can be traced. In both cases the incentive and the inspiration for the given pieces of literature was the immediate attachment to the theme. It is not some abstract issue on which they both express their considerations and theories. Life itself played the role both of the source and the expression of the crucial issues. O’Brien participates more directly, by allowing the reader to understand that he is the protagonist and the philosopher. In the same place, Woolf tries to distance herself from the problem in order to put the boundaries on pure emotions and to sound objective. She is the Shakespeare’s sister who did thrive. And that is the reason why the argument she is making is so compelling.
Works Cited
Woolf, Virginia. A Room Of One's Own. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1957. Print.
O'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. New York: Broadway Books, 1998. Print.
Bloom, Harold. Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 2005. Print.
Goodreads.’A Room Of One's Own’. N.p., 2016. Web. 16 Feb. 2016.
