PTSD In The Things They Carried

The Vietnam War is the first and only war that the United States has lost. The Vietnam War was a 20 year conflict in the mid to late 1900s between communist northern Vietnam and southern Vietnam, who had the help of the United States. The US military sent over 2.5 million soldiers to Vietnam with 60,000 casualties, 150,000 wounded, and most of the soldiers leaving with mental illnesses. Tim O’Brien was one of these soldiers and he tells the story of him and his friends during the Vietnam War in the book The Things We Carry. This book explores the tangible and intangible things that soldiers carry throughout war, and the effects on the soldiers after war. Veterans carry fear, shame, guilt, and regret, and as a result most veterans develop mental

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. In the ordinary hours of my life, I try not to dwell on it, but now and then, when I’m reading alone in a room, I’ll look up and see the young man coming out of the morning fog” (O’Brien 134). This passage shows that after traumatizing events occur O'Brien’s PTSD is triggered, causing flashbacks of the morning that he killed the young man. The author’s use of the phrase “see the young man coming out of the morning fog” connotes a sense of anxiety and fear and when combined with the use of the word “see,” this shows that O’Brien has PTSD from the life he took because he is reminded of it with flashbacks

In the chapter titled “On the Rainy River,” O'Brien explores the idea of fleeing the country to avoid the war, or staying to go to a war he doesn't believe in. He speaks of who he would disappoint if he were to take the easy way out and flee to Canada, and what he could lose by going to fight for his country. He becomes conflicted with the guilt that he feels for running away and the fear that he has for going to war. An example of the fear he has is when O'Brien writes, “Beyond all this, or at the very center, was the rar fact of terror. I did not want to die. Not ever. But certainly not then, not there, not in a wrong war [...] I sometimes felt the fear spreading inside me like weeds” (O’Brien 44). In this passage O'Brien dives into the idea of being afraid to die especially in a war that he doesn’t support. The phrase “the fear spreading inside me like weeds” is a simile, in which the author compares the fear he felt to weeds “spreading” which conveys the overwhelming feeling of fear as O'Brien gets closer to the war, he gets more scared of death. This comparison is significant because O'Brien is terrified of the war before he sets foot on the battlefield, but as the chapter described, O'Brien is also afraid of disappointing his friends and family. This raises the internal conflict between duty and honor and the