The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

Interpreting the emotional effects and impacts of war on soldiers can be quite difficult. What most people do not understand is that post-traumatic stress disorder or commonly referred to as PTSD, is something that is lifelong and troublesome to treat. It was due to the soldiers fighting in the Vietnam War, that this disorder was discovered. The National Vietnam Veterans’ Readjustment Study (NVVRS) approximates that 236,000 veterans currently have PTSD from the Vietnam War, an enormous long-term emotional and human cost of war (Vermetten). Tim O’Brien captures an astonishing painful and powerful realism through the emotions that the soldiers experience in “The Things They Carried”. By studying the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder,

In the article, “Vietnam’s Psychological Toll” by Leslie Roberts examines how impactful the war was on Vietnam soldiers. “Fifteen to twenty years later, Vietnam veterans are more than twice as likely to suffer from serious physiological problems--alcohol abuse, major depression, and anxiety--as soldiers who did not serve in Vietnam” (Roberts). These physiological problems are the number one leading result to feelings of guilt and blaming themselves for their mistakes. Jimmy Cross experiences an extreme amount of guilt and blame after the death of Lavender, “he felt shame. He hated himself. He had loved Martha more than his men, and as a consequence Lavender was now dead, and this was something he would have to carry like a stone in his stomach for the rest of the war” (O’Brien, 369). Cross blames himself for the death of this fellow soldier as he was not fully engaged with his unit’s activities due to obsessive thoughts about Martha. His guilt can be seen as a bit irrational as it was not directly his fault that Lavender got shot, but this is what makes it so devastating. He most likely would have felt guilt regardless if he was paying attention, but because he was daydreaming, it makes it very easy to place the blame upon himself. It is these feelings of guilt and blame that add to having high levels of post-traumatic stress disorder. The feeling of that there is no undoing what has been done; eats these soldiers