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How Does The Things They Carried Relate To Psychology

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War is hell. It has a lasting effect on all who endure through its pain. The constant trauma of wartime damages the psyche of it participants. To many, when they return home, it never feels like home. They are too adept to living life in crisis. When the boys return home, they are never quite the same… they may physically be home from the war. But for some mentally, it is harder to be home from the war than to be in the war itself. Literature tells these stories. “The Things They Carried”, the story of Mary Anne Bell paints a vivid picture of how war can completely alter the psychology of a person. Mary Anne Bell comes to Vietnam following her boyfriend Mark Fossie who was enlisted as a medical assistant. When she steps off the huey, she is described as “A tall big boned …show more content…

Norman Bowker is the epitome of how wartime can be harmful even after the war is over. Norman was a Vietnam Veteran who returned home in the book to find his life to be nothing like it was just years previous when he departed Bowker returned to find his girlfriend had married another man, his father was silent and disappointed in Bowkers lack of War Medals. Bowker found his home town changed and he missed the excitement of the War. Bowker also has trouble talking about the war. He reaches out to an old War friend who fails him. This lead to Bowker committing suicide. Though He didn’t die in battle, the war killed Bowker. The story of Norman Bowker is all too familiar.(The Things They Carried). Posttraumatic Stress Disorder affects not only veterans themselves, but their families. In a study called The National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study (NVVRS), “Veterans with higher levels of war-related trauma and posttraumatic symptomatology had poorer family functioning and greater domestic violence than those without trauma. The simple, hard truth is that some soldiers just can’t mentally return from the

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Through out the book titled The Things They Carried, many characters are brought upon us, who are portrayed differently from the beginning of the book to the end of the book. The author shows or portrays what can truly happen to humans as they go through time in war. War will change their character’s thoughts and appearance to the reader just by the way they are shown in the book. An example of a character that has changed throughout the book is Norman Bowker. At the beginning of the story, Norman Bowker was a young soldier who seems to be like anyone who has not experienced war themselves.

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In “The Last True Story I’ll Ever Tell”, John Crawford shows how war can drastically change soldiers by having psychological effects on them and when soldiers come back from war they can feel like they are alone. Some psychological effects are post-traumatic stress disorder, also known as PTSD, depression,

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Through centuries of great wars and battles, history has displayed brave men and women who have fought for their countries. These audacious people have helped propel countries for the greater good. However, the weight and responsibility, of the war, takes a heavy toll on soldiers that is often overlooked. Tim O’Brien, author of the novel The Things They Carried, records his stories, and the stories of his fellow soldiers during the war. However, three of these soldiers are affected in an outlandish way.

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Being in war for a long time can make you numb to the people dying around you. People that just got there will most likely be paranoid or have anxiety. Those symptoms show posttraumatic stress disorder. The flashbacks, guilty feelings and nightmares are what happens a lot of times while there in war. Flashing back to the same place over and over would be the worst nights ever.

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He could not deal with his memories that consumed him and eventually took his own life. Bowker has an internal struggle with himself and his mind after the war, especially with the memories that eventually envelop his entire life. Bowker witnessed many terrible atrocities in his time in Vietnam. His time in the war was indicative of the future he would have after seeing what he saw. He had to witness the other soldiers in his platoon die, the enemy die, the slow but sure death of innocence in his fellow man.

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Bowker had responded back stating that Tim had left out parts of Vietnam that should’ve been discussed. Eight months later, Bowker hanged himself at the YMCA. This had made Tim O’Brien realize how important storytelling is

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“In the spring of 1975, near the time of Saigon's final collapse, I received a long, disjointed letter in which Bowker described the problem of finding a meaningful use for his life after the war.” In this you see how after years later men were still struggling with issues from the war and reached out to each other for help. Although Norman did kill himself it was because he couldn't deal with his own guilt anymore for Kiowa. His brothers were always there for him and never left him, if they had known sooner they would have done everything to help him. Brotherhood is a forever bond.

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There were flares and mortar rounds, and the stink was everywhere- it was inside him, in his lungs- and he could no longer tolerate it”(149). Since the war the soldiers get flashbacks of different scenarios all the time. It takes a toll on how they think and the trauma, guilt, and grief they felt in that

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Today, suicide among soldiers is a growing problem. According to the Hartford Courant, soldiers who committed suicide were encountering serious psychological problems during deployment. In the novel The Wars, Timothy Findley suggests that some soldiers may be driven to suicide by their experiences in the war. One such character is Rodwell. Like Rodwell, these soldiers endured extreme mental anxiety and developed psychological problems that ultimately prompted to suicide.

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During the Vietnam War the soldiers, whether or not they wanted to be there, many of them developed mental illnesses. The things they would experience would cause burdens on them for the rest of their lives. “Ted Lavender, who was scared, carried tranquilizers until he was shot in the head outside the village of Than Khe in mid-April.” (The Things They Carried) Lavender carried tranquilizers until he died, because he was scared.

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The things they carried is a novel by Tim O’Brien. About the Vietnam war. About the lives of people going there. It’s a collection of war stories. Some of them true, some of the untrue and that’s the main topic that’ll be discussed in this paper.

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Do you ever wonder the way you would react after returning home from the war? Would you be the same person you were when you left, would your outlook on life completely be changed, would life as you once remembered it be the same? In Ernest Hemmingway’s story Soldier’s Home he effectively develops the theme of war changing people. By character, relationships and a lack of drive.

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The True Weight of War “The Things They Carried,” by Tim O’Brien, brings to light the psychological impact of what soldiers go through during times of war. We learn that the effects of traumatic events weigh heavier on the minds of men than all of the provisions and equipment they shouldered. Wartime truly tests the human body and and mind, to the point where some men return home completely destroyed. Some soldiers have been driven to the point of mentally altering reality in order to survive day to day. An indefinite number of men became numb to the deaths of their comrades, and yet secretly desired to die and bring a conclusion to their misery.

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No one returns from war the same person who went. War opens an unbridgeable gap between soldiers and civilians. There’s no truth in war—just each soldier’s experience. “You can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil” (from “How to Tell a True War Story,” in O’Brien’s story collection “The Things They Carried”). Irony in modern American war literature takes many forms, and all risk the overfamiliarity that transforms style into cliché.

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Soldiers that survived and return home, their pain and suffer would not end. Is been known that soldiers that almost 30 percent develop PTSD from 3 to 4 months being on home. For example, soldiers witness people dying everyday causing them to have nightmares As soon as they go to war, they know they are facing danger, torture, trauma, and stress.

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