PTSD In The Things They Carried, By Tim O Brien

In the novel, The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, a character by the name of Norman Bowker becomes suicidal, and can not successfully return back to his “normal life” after experiencing the traumatizing death of Kiowa. PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder, is a disorder in when a person can’t overcome a traumatizing event that has happened in his or her life. It can lead to nightmares of the event, lack of concentration, and a lack of sleep. It can also lead to suicidal thoughts, depression, anxiety, and other mental disorders. People suffering from PTSD can have a higher risk of suicide or self harm, as depicted in the novel. The Things They Carried does show instances of PTSD, but on the other hand, also shows the power of psychological

In, The Things They Carried, O’Brien’s cause of PTSD is thought to be of disassociation. The reason behind this is because of when he got shot, he was taken to a different location to be treated, and he did not like that because he thought that instead of being there he needed to be at the war helping out his fellow people instead of getting treated for his gunshot wound. From a reader's perspective, he might seem to think that helping his fellow war mates seems more important than his health and safety. One quote from when he got shot is this. “You slip out of your own skin, like molting, shedding your own history and your own future, leaving behind everything you ever were or wanted or believed in. You know you're about to die.” (O’Brien, 201) This is a quote from just a few minutes after he got shot. As you read this quote, you get a sense of how he felt and the feeling Tim O’Brien had as he thought he was going to die. The next quote in this is about how hard it was for O’Brien to recover after returning home from Vietnam. “At night I sometimes drank too much. I’d remember getting shot and yelling out for a medic and then waiting and waiting and waiting, passing out once, then waking up and screaming some more, and how the screaming seemed to make new pain, the awful stink of myself, the sweat and fear, Bobby Jorgenson’s clumsy fingers when he finally got around to working on me. I kept going over it all, every detail.” (O’Brien, 191) Though this quote may be quite long, but it is very crucial in the example of how this book really portrays PTSD. It is showing how hard it was for O’Brien to overcome his case of PTSD, and how hard it probably is for the rest of the returning soldiers to recover. It is explaining how when O'Brien returned home, he seems to have become somewhat of an alcoholic, and when he drank, his mind was racing 100 MPH thinking about and reliving the