The Vietnam War By Tim O Brien

The Vietnam War is widely considered one of the most traumatizing wars ever and had at least 58,220 recorded deaths. In his 1990 war novel, author Tim O’Brien asserts that easing the pain of trauma is extremely difficult to manage. However, through memories, storytelling, and limiting the weight of emotional agony, alleviating these struggles becomes less difficult.

Simply recalling the memories of people who have died and made an impact on one’s life can relieve traumatizing experiences. Tim O’Brien recalls his first encounter concerning death which involved his first love, Linda, and while pondering this, he explains that “as a writer now, I want to save Linda’s life. Not her body--her life” (O’Brien 223). While he went through this as a

Expressing his disbelief when Linda died, as a writer he recalls that “In Vietnam, too, we had ways of making the dead seem not quite so dead. Shaking hands, that was one way” (O’Brien 225). This tactic helps the soldiers think about the aliveness of the dead, which in a way helps them avoid blaming somebody for the death. Because they are serving in a war, there is no such thing as safety and having something that can pull someone back, such as emotional trauma, is something to avoid. Limiting this weight of emotional agony at this point during the war helps prevent the trauma of that death in future instances. Tim O’Brien experiences something similar when Linda dies, and he asks to go see the body as “[he] tried to pretend she was taking a nap, her hands folded at her stomach, just sleeping away the afternoon” (O’Brien 229). Picturing the situation in a brighter light generally helps the weight of the death off that person’s shoulders. Typically, death is an extremely difficult experience to get through, but imagining such a different outcome helps to overcome it. Self-blame is never the answer, even though a lot of the time, it is a default feeling after losing someone close. A large portion of overcoming a thing like death is to prevent self blame and emotional trauma in the first