Question

In “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien discuss briefly about the physical, psychological, death and emotional content that the soldiers bear.

Answer 1

Note: This response is in UK English, please paste the response to MS Word and you should be able to spot discrepancies easily. You may elaborate the answer based on personal views or your classwork if necessary. Also, I do not own the book and have written based on free snippets. You may add particular incidents based on the book.

(Answer) In the book, “The Things They Carried,” Tim O’Brien talks about the Vietnam War from the perspective of a single soldier. One might think that the only victims of a war are the people who are being shot at. However, the story goes to outline how the person shooting dies just as much as the person who is being shot.

The book describes the plight of soldiers and the psychological implications of war. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is also known as PTSD and used to go by the name “shell-shock” in the mid-1900’s. This was a common disorder noticed amongst the soldiers of both the world wars and other civil unrest around the world.

The common symptoms of PTSD include:

Anxiety and flashbacks triggered by memories of past events.

The failure to recover after experiencing or witnessing a terrifying event.

PTSD can last months or even years if left unchecked.

PTSD alters emotional and physical reactions to great extents.

PTSD can make a patient feel depressed and hence withdrawn from general events. Also, patients tend to avoid the circumstance that may remind them of the event that caused the pain.

PTSD patients can also feel a sense of chronic despair. This, in turn, leads them to neglect their health and daily activities in life.

In the book, the soldiers generally succumb to these symptoms at some point in the stories and incidents narrated.

Positive human relationships and the nurturing dynamics of a social environment can greatly assist one suffering from this condition. Also, such conditions are opposite to that of a war and hence, the author belittles such conditions.