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PTSD In Stephen Dobyn's Short Story, Kansas

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In the short story, “Kansas” by Stephen Dobyns a young boy gets a ride from a crazy farmer. The teenage boy is on his way to summer school when he sees a Plymouth coupe speed down the dusty road. Soon after, a farmer offers him a ride but they boy did not know that the farmer was chasing the Plymouth coupe. As the farmer is trying to have a conversation with the boy, he notices a gun and his life basically flashes before his eyes. The farmer tells the boy how he’s going to shoot the man and the woman in the Plymouth coupe because that was his wife in there. This boy has many plans for his future but when he meets the farmer it all seems to take a twisted turn. After the farmer drops off the boy, the boy never hears anything about them anymore. As the boy grows old, he continues to have flashbacks about what he could’ve done differently. The boy’s future is nothing how he had planned. The boy passes away as a sick old man and his sons watch how they put him in a body bag and the same way the boy was stuck with the situation of the farmer for the rest of his life, his kids will have that image of their …show more content…

The old man’s life wasn’t at all what he had imagined when he was a teenage boy “hitchhiking on the back-country Kansas road” (Dobyns 117). The farmer situation affected that man’s life drastically giving him manurable ill throughout his life until the day he died. Also, PTSD symptoms vary from other people and some may argue that the old man didn’t suffer the illness because it isn’t as how they think it is. The man’s disorder derives from the traumatic experience with the farmer and the gun. The proof for that is that sixty years later the man was still thinking about that unforgettable, life changing

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