ipl-logo

Mental Trauma In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

842 Words4 Pages

In the book The Things They Carried, people experienced serious mental trauma. Not only did some, if not all, of them come back home with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, but they also came back to a nation full of hate and uneasiness towards the veterans. These veterans came back home riddled with guilt and visions flashing before their eyes every time they closed them, people’s worst nightmares put into real life, and yet these veterans are dishonorably discharged, with statements saying that they must not have been good enough for the war. Tim O’Brien, the author of this book, decided to tell us all of the war stories he will never be able to forget, in order to help us picture the unimaginable horrors that all of these veterans went through. …show more content…

Jimmy Cross felt, even during war. She was his hope, his love, the normality of home. Martha was safe in his mind, where no one could hurt her, where the war couldn’t affect her. Lt. Cross took pictures of her with him into war, as well as a necklace and the letters she would send him. Martha was always on his mind, and she was always at home, waiting for him. One day, they are sent into the tunnels, and Cross imagines Martha as well as himself being crushed under the heavy weight of soil and mud. Ted Lavender is shot in this time, and then Cross realized that this is death, not home, and love has so place in the jungles and crossfire of a war in Vietnam. Not only is Martha an example of love, but she’s an example of home, of bliss and many other things that the men cannot have while in …show more content…

After an older man is found dead in a razed village, O’Brien is asked to join in making fun of this deceased man. He thinks back to Linda, whom he had taken on a date in the fourth grade, and consequently fallen in love with. She fell from life because of a brain tumor, yet O’Brien kept her alive with the fantasies and stories he made up in his head, using her as the love of his life. With these backstories and explanations, one can conclude that through stories, the dead will live, such as O’Brien stated in the book. Kathleen shown the true innocence of the life and world back home. When she is nine years old, she asks her father, Tim O’Brien, if he had ever killed someone, assuming that he writes all of these war stories because he had killed someone during the war. This creates the atmosphere for “The Man I Killed” to be told, but in a first person, no detail left out. Kathleen represents the small, childlike naivety and innocence of America and it’s people during the Vietnam

Show More
Related
670 Words | 3 Pages

Shame and self-hatred surface when Lieutenant Cross realizes “…Ted Lavender [is] dead because he [loves] her [Martha] so much and [cannot] stop thinking about her” (326). Furthermore, the pebble that once symbolized his affection for Martha is replaced with a figurative “stone in his stomach” (332), representative of his guilt. In order to begin to remove his distracting infatuation with Martha, Cross takes the following action: “On the morning after Ted Lavender [dies], First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross [crouches] at the bottom of his foxhole and [burns] Martha’s letters. Then he [burns] the two photographs” (336). Cross’ burning of Martha’s letters and photographs is a physical representation of the transformation in his personality and priorities.

Read More
1276 Words | 6 Pages

Martha is not really in love with cross but considers him as a friend. Martha would send letters sometimes such as pictures of a sea while Jimmy was away. She would sign the letters with “love, Martha” and when Jimmy “kissed her, she received the kiss without returning it” (295,302). Cross saw Martha as a girlfriend where Martha saw Jimmy as merely a close friend.

Read More
800 Words | 4 Pages

In the things they carried by Tim O’brien, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross was deeply in love with Martha. But one day when a soldier was killed under his watch, he blamed Martha for his death, and wanted to forget all about her. This was the day after Ted's death, “Jimmy Cross crouched at the bottom of his foxhole and burned Martha's letters” (O’Brien 22). The letters of Martha was the only thing that he had to remind him of her. Burning the letters symbolized destroying Martha from his life.

Read More
888 Words | 4 Pages

After a long day of marching, “He would imagine romantic camping trips into the White Mountains in New Hampshire. He would sometimes taste the envelope flaps, knowing her tongue had been there” (1). The author uses abstract diction to emphasize the strong love Cross maintains for Martha, signifying the huge role Martha plays in Cross’s experience in war. Not long after, Cross’s dreams becomes more exotic. Hoping that Martha is still a virgin, he recalls a story of when he got rejected, It was at "a dark theater, he remembered, and the movie was Bonnie and Clyde, and Martha wore a tweed skirt, and during the final scene, when he touched her knee, she turned and looked at him in a sad, sober way that made him pull his hand back”.

Read More
1088 Words | 5 Pages

He tried to concentrate on ... the war, all the dangers, but his love was too much for him.” (11) Jimmy Cross’s love later becomes a burden as he blames himself for the death of Ted Lavender “because he loved [Martha] so much and could not stop thinking about her” (6). “No more fantasies, he told himself.” (23) He realized that he and Martha were a world apart.

Read More
1009 Words | 5 Pages

Throughout the text, Cross “could not stop thinking about [Martha]” (p. 116), unable to concentrate on the war or the men he is charged with leading. Consequently, Cross’ distraction and inadequate leadership result in Lavender’s death. Cross finds himself accountable because “he loved [Martha] more than anything, more than his men, and now Ted Lavender was dead because he loved her so much and could not stop thinking about her” (p.

Read More
747 Words | 3 Pages

For many soldiers returning home from war, the truth about what happened can be a hard and confusing thing. The book The Things They Carried, written by Tim O’Brien, and published in 1990, describes his time in the war. O’Brien struggles the whole time with differentiating his emotional memories with events that actually happened, and tries to impress upon the reader what it was actually like to be over in Vietnam. O’brien believes that war stories do not always accurately portray what war was like, and that is why story-truth can be truer than the happening-truth.

Read More
648 Words | 3 Pages

Jimmy Cross is the first lieutenant who carries pictures and letters from Martha, the woman he loves who—sadly—does not love him back. The pictures and letters from Martha symbolize Jimmy’s longing to be loved and comforted. It is ironic that although he is the first lieutenant who is expected to take charge and lead others, yet he never took charge of his own love life. This is a regret and burden Cross carries to the end of the story. “It was very sad, he thought.

Read More
868 Words | 4 Pages

It looks to be as if he is falling more and more in love with Martha, because she sends him a small pebble and he carries it everywhere and even puts it in his mouth to taste the sea salt. However, it slowly became clear that Lieutenant Cross was becoming more cold but the story becomes more expressive of what Cross is feeling. As the story continues Cross expresses his love and still daydreams about Martha, however he one day goes to the trench and puts the letters she sent him in a fire. He gets colder and starts to act more like a commander of his squadron, he also makes sure to pay attention more. As he thinks of Martha he just knows that she belongs somewhere else.

Read More
689 Words | 3 Pages

Though Tim Obrien never confirms the stories he shares in The Things They Carried are true he does share some very insightful anecdotes about the trauma he carried with him from Vietnam. One particular quote that highlights this is “A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth”.(53) This quote means that Tim Obrien feels that to him the depravity and trauma he experienced in Vietnam is beyond difficult to fathom and little more than a lie and that he can recollect on the perhaps fictional but very similar trauma his characters carry with

Read More
1768 Words | 8 Pages

Dangerous and intense situations typically lead to certain devastating consequences to a persons both emotional and physical health. As result of these experiences, there is often not only exterior injuries, but also the non visual psychological damage that is just as hard, if not harder, to resolve. One commonality throughout all wars is this unseen casualty known as PTSD, or post traumatic stress disorder. Tim O’Brien, veteran of the Vietnam war, demonstrates how PTSD affects soldiers in countless ways in his novel The Things They Carried. He uses fictional but lovable characters that readers can easily relate to, intensifying their emotional engagement in the book.

Read More
1185 Words | 5 Pages

In the novel The Things They Carried, author Tim O’Brien dives into the stories that he and his companions experienced in the Vietnam War. These stories show the traumatic events that can damage a person for the rest of their life. These traumatic experiences develop into the disorder known as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). PTSD is a known

Read More
1425 Words | 6 Pages

Veterans carry guilt and regret from war, which illustrates the PTSD they develop from witnessing traumatic deaths that they feel responsible for. In the book, The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, the soldiers in active war in Vietnam experience life changing events that leave them with emotional baggage that they have to carry with them throughout the war and after. In the chapter “Ambush” O’Brien speaks of the first man that he killed, and the guilt and regret that he carries from it. He said, “Even now I haven’t finished sorting it out. Sometimes I forgive myself, other times I don’t.

Read More
999 Words | 4 Pages

The True Weight of War “The Things They Carried,” by Tim O’Brien, brings to light the psychological impact of what soldiers go through during times of war. We learn that the effects of traumatic events weigh heavier on the minds of men than all of the provisions and equipment they shouldered. Wartime truly tests the human body and and mind, to the point where some men return home completely destroyed. Some soldiers have been driven to the point of mentally altering reality in order to survive day to day. An indefinite number of men became numb to the deaths of their comrades, and yet secretly desired to die and bring a conclusion to their misery.

Read More
601 Words | 3 Pages

Martha had a big effect on Jimmy cross 's during his adventure in Vietnam. “Jimmy Cross 's had loved Martha more than his man , and as a consequence lavender was dead now and this was something he had to carry like a stone in his stomach for the rest of the war and life.” Martha was a young lady that Lieutenant Jimmy Cross was obsessed with. It was very possible the distraction of Martha caused lavender to die. Although Martha never loved cross.

Read More

More about Mental Trauma In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

Open Document