PTSD In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

“Soldiers who’ve endured the depraved world of combat experience their own symptoms. Trauma is an expulsive cataclysm of the soul. The Moral Injury, New York Times. Feb 17, 2015” David Brooks. This trauma is not only physical damage but psychological, and as many soldiers have learned you can bandage your physical wounds but you can’t bandage the wounds on your soul. Tim O’Brien recalls his Vietnam story and tells it; only to remember the details because of the PTSD he suffered from. A soldier seeing a friend die in your arms is an experience no man should bare and if that wasn’t enough, but PTSD can cause soldiers to relive every second of it in the safety of their own home. Apart from the obvious physical wounds like gunshots and burns there

Millions of people in the USA alone suffer from PTSD. From car accidents, domestic violence,assault, war, and seeing a loved one or best friend die; PTSD has a wide variety of victims. Based on various research concerning Vietnam war veterans and the novel “The Things They Carried”by Tim O’Brien, war has physical, psychological, and emotional effects on Vietnam War veterans.
The physical trauma soldiers endured ruined their lives and any chance of a normal life at home, if they were still alive. In the Vietnam War alone, 85000 killed, 350000 wounded, and 2000 captured. Most deaths were attributed to the high voltage shells and explosions used in the Vietnam War, which caused third degree burns, broken bones, shrapnel wounds, spinal cord injuries, nerve damage, paralysis, and amputations. Vietnam terrain was full of jungle with booby traps and dense brush which was perfect for mosquitoes. Mosquitoes were a big problem in the Vietnam War, as the mosquitoes would spread disease that Americans haven't seen before,

Soldiers have an inability to form close bonds to family members and are detached from everyone else. When you’re on the front line against the enemies, you need to know your allies. Learning and having a good friendship with fellow soldiers helped soldiers get their minds off the cruel world. Soldiers would usually tell fellow soldiers everything. They would tell them their family what they liked, what they didn’t like, and deep emotions. These guys saw each other at their weakest and their strongest. They would form a lifetime bond that is unforgettable Sometimes you take what you have for granted, and you don’t know what you have until you lose it. When soldiers lost their friends on the field, it was life changing. The person they told everything to was lying in their arms dead. You think about what they lost and the family and girlfriend they had. What kind of future was waiting for them? This would break the soldiers and they became cold and experience deep depression. Some common emotional symptoms of PTSD are those soldiers get depressed and worry too much. Soldiers don’t like the things they liked before and they always feel