“Spin” By Tim O’Brien

“Spin” The third story in The Things They Carried, like the title story, is structured in a nonlinear fashion. A collection of vignettes, “Spin” is made up of anecdotes, memories, and brief commentary. Unlike the standard short story model, in which there must be a beginning, middle and end, or rising and falling action, O’Brien creates a patchwork of moments. With a partner, find examples (mark with sticky note) of the following techniques…  

“Spin” Short, seemingly unrelated stories or anecdotes on a similar topic. Occasional sentences of commentary about the meaning of the story, but nothing heavy-handed. Lots of physical details—these are stories, not philosophy Single-sentence paragraphs with very short sentences at the start or end of the sections. Intentional sentence fragments. Parallel openings: Several of the sections start with “I remember,” for instance. In fact there are many examples of parallelism and repetition throughout the story.

“Spin” Meta- (from Greek: μετά = "after", "beyond", "with", "adjacent", "self") Metafiction- Fiction in which the author purposely alludes to the artificiality of a work by departing from the story to remind the reader it’s a story. In other words, the author writes about the fact that she’s writing. For example: “I sit at this typewriter and stare through my words and watch Kiowa sinking into the deep muck…” (32). Write down one more example of metafiction from “Spin.” Explain what effect metafiction has on this story.