ALLEGORICAL NARRATIVES OF THE VIETNAM WAR

Autores

  • Tom Burns Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina

Palavras-chave:

Allegory, Vietnam narratives, Vietnam War literature,

Resumo

In this article, three novels of the mid-1970s, published at the end of the Vietnam War – Jonathan Rubin’s The Barking Deer (1974), Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War (1975), and Robert Stone’s Dog Soldiers (1974) - are analyzed as examples of allegorical narrative, whose theoretical aspects are initially discussed. It is argued that the peculiarities of the Vietnam War (morally and politically suspect and even militarily ambiguous) made some authors attempt to represent it indirectly and obliquely through varied narrative strategies like allegory and fantasy, rather than the realism of classic war narratives.

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