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Post Traumatic Stress Disorder In The Yellow Birds

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Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, is defined as, “a mental health condition triggered by experiencing or seeing a terrifying event.” (Mayo Clinic) The condition enables an individual to imagine the horrific event repeatedly due to a trigger. PTSD is most common among soldiers or those in the line of duty. This is due to the brutality of combat. Some events that may have the potential to create the disorder in soldiers include seeing dead bodies, being shot at, being attacked or ambushed, receiving rocket or mortar fire, or knowing someone seriously injured or killed.
The novel, The Yellow Birds, written by Kevin Powers exemplifies Post Traumatic Stress Disorder through the characters within the book. The novel “is a tale of friendship, loss and redemption.” (Book rags) The story is told from the perspective of Private John Bartle, the main character, who is a prime example of a PTSD victim. …show more content…

When he’s at the airport, he pictured leaving a trail of sand behind him. This imagery shows that the war is still attached to him and shows that Bartle psyche is unstable. Further in the book, Bartle is depressed and ashamed of his actions and continues to drink nightly. This shows how mentally unstable the war has caused him to be. Powers depicts Bartle’s instability and shows how critical his case of PTSD is.
Murph’s mental stability also deteriorated throughout the duration of the novel. In Chapter Four, Murph’s girlfriend wrote him a letter breaking up with him. Although he doesn’t show physically that he was hurt, this was the beginning. The author makes the reader feel sorry for Murph in this chapter. He’s on the other side of the world, fighting to stay alive, and his girlfriend broke up with him. Bartle also notices a change in Murph indicating how much the stress of the war has aged him. This begins the decline of Murph’s mentality and he slowly gives into the state of

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According to the National Center for PTSD, 15 out of every 100 Vietnam War Veterans was diagnosed with PTSD. In the Vietnam War many of the soldiers had to deal with trauma from the things that they had witnessed. The signs of trauma are great, and they affected the soldiers greatly. It is not always evident at first, but can show up in the later years. War is making Americans go crazy.

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Although Powers did not necessarily experience the same traumatic events that Bartle experiences, such as losing his best friend, Bartle, as a narrator, can perhaps be described as Powers’ surrogate. A surrogate is one who is “put into the place of another as a successor, substitute, or deputy” (Dictionary.com). Powers wanted the novel to be meaningful to his readers, so he projected his own thoughts and experiences in/regarding the war onto his narrator in order for the novel to be as real and honest and possible. In an interview with Tom Gjelten of NPR, Powers

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PTSD is an illness that cannot be easily healed. The symptoms include: Nightmares, flashbacks, triggers, hard time sleeping, difficulty concentrating, you could also be easily startled. There are many situations that you would make you angry, or upset. If you were close to death in a Vietcong dug hole, you may hate being in small places, avoiding them at all costs becoming claustrophobic. This disorder often times does not end up being healed and is something you have to deal with for the rest of your

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In the novel, Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane talks about Henry Fleming, a young man who enlists for the war and has very little experience. During the novel, Henry has witnessed war as a glorified period rather than the true reality of it. Crane suggests that war is harming Henry, since his perception is the true reason why Henry well end up getting killed on the battlefield. Also, Crane emphasizes that war should be seen as brutal and traumatizing as its actual reality rather than glorifying. This tells us Henry may have a disorder called PTSD, since during the war he encounters a potential hallucination that helped him on his survival.

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Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in The Things They Carried During the turbulent times of the Vietnam War, thousands of young men entered the warzone and came face-to-face with unimaginable scenes of death, destruction, and turmoil. While some perished in the dense Asian jungles, others returned to American soil and were forced to confront their lingering combat trauma. Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried provides distinct instances of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and reveals the psychological trauma felt by soldiers in the Vietnam War. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD for short, is the most common mental illness affecting soldiers both on and off the battlefield.

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He shows signs of depression, PTSD, OCD, bipolar disorder, and the beginning stages of anxiety and anger issues. From the beginning of the book, one can see that he different than other characters who have similar characteristics. He is “in that unhappy phase of life, that transitional stage, where he has outgrown the relatively well-ordered world of his childhood and must find his way in the world of adults” (Bungert). This is important considering that many people get diagnosed with mental illnesses when they are in their teenage years. His struggles for getting out of childhood is a stressor for his mind.

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