PTSD In The Things They Carried, By Tim O Brien

A soldier’s heart is a past term used to describe someone with PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), specifically given to someone who fought in the Civil War. Someone with a soldier’s heart experiences fear on a higher level. They may even find certain things that wouldn’t be scary to someone with a stable mind terrifying. Symptoms can be re-experiencing trauma, emotional numbness, and sheltering away from other people. After completing the book, “Soldier’s Heart,” by Gary Paulsen, I truly believe that Charley Goddard suffered from PTSD during and after fighting in the Civil War.

Like all wars the Vietnam War had Physical and Psychologial scars. Fifty-eight thousand people were killed, two thousand captured, and three hundred thousand wounded. I could talk more about the physical trauma, but I want to talk about the psychological damages the war caused O’Brien and other soldiers. O’Brien was a part of the war and through the story you can see his bitterness and how the war affected his mind. Like loosing his best friend Ted Lavender, the chapter I chose to do is On the Rainy River.

An example of a women dealing with PTSD is shown in the story The Train, by Mariette Kalinowski. “At times, when she was consumed by the tightness of Iraq and barely conscious on the train, she wondered if what she was feeling was ever her own, as though she were living someone else’s memories, transforming into another person.” (63) The protagonist is trying to recall what happened during her deployment. She recalls parts of what happened in Iraq but not all.

Tim O’Brien’s struggle with his decision on the matters of his draft notice conveys an emotional turmoil that soldiers no doubt would have also have felt when seeing a similar notice. However, because of the shame that would have brought those soldiers and their families if they were to flee, they decided on what O'Brien also had decided, to fight and only having desires of fleeing away; never acting upon them. However, because he fails to do what he thought was right and follow through with his desire it causes him to believe that even though he survives the Vietnam War, "it's not a happy ending," for he "was a coward," when going into the war. He recalled this because his decision to go to war was motivated by shame, and he just saw himself as a coward who gave in to social pressures that came along with an obligation he never asked

In the novel The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien we learn about O’Brien and his soldiers during the Vietnamese war. The Vietnamese war was a deadly and very costly war between the North Vietnam and their communist allies versus the Southern Vietnam and the United states. Throughout the novel Tim O’Brien narrates many stories about the war. Stories about traumatic incidents, pleasant occasions, sorrowful events, and even peculiar event. Personal accounts about himself and also tells about experiences his fellow soldiers faced.

In Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried,” the character, O’Brien, is shot during combat. The medic on duty, being a rooky, is unsure of how to help O’Brien. He is later hospitalized and unable to fight anymore. When he finally returns to combat duty, he feels out of place and no longer at home with the other soldiers. He becomes obsessed with exacting his revenge on the medic.

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) develops from a traumatic experience months or even years after the event itself, causing many hard-to-identify symptoms. As our knowledge of PTSD has expanded, we have learned that it can be induced from any traumatizing experience a person might encounter, however many cases of PTSD are discovered in people after returning home from war. Due to the psychological nature of this condition and the absolute lack of physical anomalies associated with it, there has been a shortage of adequate healing procedures in place for PTSD over the years. In spite of this, some veterans have found outlets to cope, for better or worse, with their newfound psychological abnormalities. Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried

The Vietnam War was very different from the past wars. There were a lot more cases of PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) among soldiers than any other wars http://historyofptsd.umwblogs.org/vietnam/ . In ‘The Things They Carried’, a book about the Vietnam War written by Tim O’Brien, using the psychological lense can help us understand how wars can change a person’s mental state dramatically. It can show us what soldiers had to carry during the war, including intangibles, like fear and guilt. These men had to fight a war that the U.S. did not have to be involved in and it changed their whole life.

Towards the end of the book, O 'Brien talks about the mental change the war creates in your mind that never lets you completely bounce back to civilization. On page 208 and 226, the author explains two strategies the soldiers use to keep themselves sane in Vietnam. They use language tricks, turning miles of marching in the pitch dark was called the “night life”, a burnt body became a “crunchie munchie” or a “crispy critter”; “If it isn’t human, it doesn’t matter much if it’s dead.” On page 215, Tim is new to the war and he hasn’t developed the humor the rest of the guys have, like shaking hands with dead bodies to make the deaths seem less real. The author’s friend, Kiowa, says, “Well, you’re new here.

This chapter “The Ghost Soldiers”, showed us how Tim O’Brien and the other soldiers were dealing with the war both physically and psychologically. It also shows us how the Tim O'Brien behaved and felt when he was shot, wounded and had a bacteria infection on his butt and how the war changed the way he thought, and viewed the other soldiers around him. This chapter also contain a lot of psychological lens. From the way Tim O’Brien felt when he was shot and separated from his unit to a new unit to when he wanted revenge on Bobby Jorgenson for almost “killing” him.

He fought a war in Vietnam that he knew nothing about, all he knew was that, “Certain blood was being shed for uncertain reasons” (38). He realized that he put his life on the line for a war that is surrounded in controversy and questions. Through reading The Things They Carried, it was easy to feel connected to the characters; to feel their sorrow, confusion, and pain. O’Briens ability to make his readers feel as though they are actually there in the war zones with him is a unique ability that not every author possess.

His coping mechanism that he uses is through his writing about the Vietnam War. He is writing because he is trying to deal or understand what happened in the war. In the chapter “The Lives of the living Dead”, explains that through O’Brien’s writings, he able to come to peace at what he observed and did in combat. He may not understand why events had happened because he has not remembered the most traumatic experiences clearly. Even if his friends are dead, he will be able to remember them and his surviving platoon, through his stories to immortalize them.

PTSD Affecting Soldiers He stood there, frozen, shocked, not knowing what to do when he saw a gun pointed at him. Thankfully, the trigger didn’t work, but he had to witness a scarring event, in which he had shot his enemy in the head. It is not surprising that soldiers returning from a stressful war often suffer from a psychological condition called Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. For instance, in the book Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers, the principle character Perry unmistakably demonstrates how war troopers can be damaged and experience the ill effects of PTSD.

This quote epitomizes the trauma caused by war. O’Brien is trying to cope, mostly through writing these war stories but has yet to put it behind him. He feels guilt, grief, and responsibility, even making up possible scenarios about the life of the man he killed and the type of person he was. This

Near the start of the chapter “On the Rainy River”, O’Brien receives the one notice in the mail which he had been hoping to avoid for the rest of his life: he is drafted and enlisted for duty in the Vietnam War. Long before he received the notice he went through negative warlike experiences such as hating boy scouts. Additionally, he feels as if there is no point in the war, but the people in his town keep encouraging him to go. Troubled with a large dilemma, he goes back to his hometown in Minnesota, pondering for days. Eventually, he thinks of himself as a coward, and he reveals that he “couldn’t endure the mockery, or the disgrace or the patriotic ridicule…[he] couldn’t make [himself] be brave...