PTSD In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien displays Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) to a reader who is not familiar with what it is perfectly because of the many different perspectives and examples he gives in his stories. National Geographic started a program where war veterans could create a mask to show their experiences after the war. This is such an important program because it helps soldiers express themselves in a way that they can not do so with words, and it also spreads awareness to anybody who wants to look at the masks. Many of these masks happen to relate to the themes of different stories in The Things They Carried, both the stories and the masks are a great way to understand someone

In the story, there are many different behaviors that make it clear to the reader that Norman is unable to get past the war and the trauma surrounding it. These behaviors include continuing to drive around a lake being stuck in a specific path, making up conversations he might have with his dad about the war, and convincing himself that normal occurrences must be effects of the war. One day while Norman is driving, he passes through a town. He describes it as, “A tour bus feeling, in a way, except the town he was touring seemed dead. Through the windows, as if in a stop-motion photograph, the place looked as if it had been hit by nerve gas, everything still and lifeless, even the people” (143). Nerve gas was commonly used in war to make your body shut down, it would never be used on some random town. The fact that this was Norman’s initial reaction to this town shows how stuck he is in a headspace where all he thinks about is the war. All of his behaviors connect with the mask because it shows how one half of him, the physical half of him is home and safe from war, but another half of him, the mental half of him is still stuck in the war, with war in his mind all the time and him just wanting to truly be at home. It is sad to see how people who protected their country for other people feel like they have to keep their emotions to themselves all the