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PTSD In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

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Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) develops from a traumatic experience months or even years after the event itself, causing many hard-to-identify symptoms. As our knowledge of PTSD has expanded, we have learned that it can be induced from any traumatizing experience a person might encounter, however many cases of PTSD are discovered in people after returning home from war. Due to the psychological nature of this condition and the absolute lack of physical anomalies associated with it, there has been a shortage of adequate healing procedures in place for PTSD over the years. In spite of this, some veterans have found outlets to cope, for better or worse, with their newfound psychological abnormalities. Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried …show more content…

Vonnegut’s struggle with PTSD was more typical than that of O’Brien, for he had difficulty separating past and present. Relating to O’Brien’s intentional plot structure, Vonnegut creates a deliberate disarray. Instead of retelling previous events in order to convey his emotions like O’Brien, Vonnegut designedly creates an impression of chaos among his pages. Many of the chapters are full of experiences that could not have occurred, rather than reiterations of things that could have occurred. Vonnegut spends many pages on Tralfamadorians who are “two feet high, and green, and shaped like plumber's friends. Their suction cups were on the ground, and their shafts, which were extremely flexible, usually pointed to the sky. At the top of each shaft was a little hand with a green eye in its palm. The creatures were friendly, and they could see in four dimensions” (Vonnegut 26). The plot is meant to be difficult to understand, and, in conjunction with constant time jumps, it is difficult to follow the plot as well. This is a hyperbolic example of PTSD, as no one suffering from PTSD actually travels to the past, but the onslaught of confusion Vonnegut’s protagonist Billy Pilgrim experiences is meant to highlight the extremities of Vonnegut’s struggles with PTSD. Although O’Brien and Vonnegut’s overall plots share similar structure, there is a stark contrast between their chapter structures. In conjunction with “reliving the event” (USDVA), it is advised that people who suffer from PTSD “avoid situations that remind you of an event” (USDVA) because they may trigger severe symptoms. Instead of a collection of short stories, Vonnegut created one endless loop for Billy Pilgrim to travel through indefinitely. The book is written as though between chapters Billy is transported through time, rather

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