




During the Vietnam War, many soldiers were affected by the Post-traumatic Stress disorder, also known as PTSD. This disorder occurs when the person is exposed to a traumatic event, in which they have experienced a serious injury or witnessed a death. PTSD has affected a number of Vietnam veterans who have suffered extreme traumatic experiences during the Vietnam War. In Tim O’Brien’s story The Things They Carried, we can understand how PTSD from the war has traumatizing effects and can change the way a person lives as they try to adapt to their civilian lives. We can see the effects of PTSD on the character Lieutenant Jimmy Cross because his emotions reflect the many symptoms experienced by those affected with PTSD due to their service during the Vietnam War. 

PTSD is a psychological disorder that occurs after a traumatic event. The disorder PTSD is commonly known as “shell shock” or the “war sickness.” Some of the characteristics of PTSD include re-experiencing the traumatic event, increased anxiety, and avoiding events that remind them of that traumatic event. People with PTSD often have problems functioning. In Richard J. McNally’s Psychiatric Casualties of War, talks about PTSD in Vietnam veterans as a controversial medical and political issue. McNally’s article mainly focuses on the statistical data and prevalence of the disorder in Vietnam veterans. According to McNally, some of the men who developed PTSD from the Vietnam War no longer had the disorder by the late 1980s, yet in this modern period McNally notes that rates of PTSD have increased by 79.5% in Vietnam Veterans (923). Many Vietnam veterans with PTSD were found to have problems with their relationships, family, and problems with employment due to increased incidents of violence. Also people with PTSD have higher risk of developing other anxiety disorders, eating disorders, and depression. Another high risk is the person attempting to commit suicide or do self-harm. These are some of the statics shown in Vietnam veterans with PTSD.

In the story The Things They Carried, like many other Vietnam veterans, the character First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross shows progressing signs of PTSD. One of the early symptoms for PTSD includes daydreaming. Lieutenant Jimmy Cross daydreams about his love Martha. For example in the story, “He should’ve risked it. Whenever he looked at the photographs, he thought of new things he should’ve done” (O’Brien 330). Jimmy Cross daydreams of expressing his love to Martha. Another symptom Lieutenant Jimmy Cross possesses is loneliness and isolation. There are several instances in the story where Jimmy Cross isolates himself from the soldiers to take time in his fantasies, especially when he goes into his foxhole. For example, “In the late afternoon, after a day's march, he would dig his foxhole, wash his hands under a canteen, unwrap the letters, hold them with the tips of his fingers, and spend the last hour of light pretending.” (O’Brien 328). Also Jimmy Cross feels deprived of his love because his hope for happiness is gone when Martha rejects him. This causes him to drift apart from the rest of troop. Due to this isolation, Cross becomes confused and endangers the lives of his soldiers.

The protagonist, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, is a soldier who is madly in love with a woman named Martha. Depicted by Tim O’Brien, “In his wallet, Lieutenant Cross carried two photographs of Martha. The first was a Kodacolor snapshot signed Love, though he knew better.” (329). Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried around photos and letters from his love, Martha.  Throughout the story, Jimmy Cross is torn between his love Martha and protecting his fellow soldiers. Yet Martha does not feel the same affection towards Cross. Jimmy constantly dreams about being with Martha and is delighted when he received letters from her.  Lieutenant Jimmy Cross feels this way because the letters he receives from Martha say, “signed Love, Martha, but Lieutenant Cross understood that Love was only a way of signing and did not mean what he sometimes pretended it meant” (O’Brien 328). Yet Jimmy Cross in his world feels that Martha loves him back, but in reality she does not. Also when Tim O’Brien says, “Slowly, a bit distracted, he would get up and move among his men, checking the perimeter, then at full dark he would return to his hole and watch the night and wonder if Martha was a virgin” (328). This shows how all he cared about was Martha. Jimmy does not pay attention to his real life and his surroundings. Lieutenant Jimmy Cross was basically living in a world of fantasy. His fantasy is to escape from the war and be with his love Martha. This makes Jimmy Cross potentially weak and unable to wake up from his dream and go back to reality. In his mind, we can tell that he was always wandering elsewhere, never in the current situation. This weakness makes him an easy target for his enemies. Jimmy Cross would become weak because he would wish for the day when he could be with Martha again after the war as he forgets the current situation around him. 

One of the common symptoms for Vietnam veterans is trauma and shock. The most significant event that changed Lieutenant Jimmy Cross’s life was watching his fellow soldier Ted Lavender die right next to him. After Lavender’s death, Jimmy Cross does not go a day in his life without blaming himself for the death. An example of how Jimmy Cross copes with himself due to the death of Lavender is when “Kiowa explained how Lavender died, Lieutenant Cross found himself trembling. He tried not to cry. With his entrenching tool, which weighed 5 pounds, he began digging a hole in the earth. He felt shame. He hated himself” (O’Brien 337). We can tell that Jimmy Cross is deeply hurt and traumatized by Lavender’s death and he blames himself for it. Another event where Jimmy Cross expresses his guilt of Ted Lavender’s death is when O’Brien says “First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross crouched at the bottom of his foxhole and burned Martha's letters. Then he burned the two photographs… He realized it was only a gesture. Stupid, he thought. Sentimental, too, but mostly just stupid. Lavender was dead. You couldn't burn the blame” (339). Even though it wasn’t Jimmy Cross’s fault that Lavender was killed, Cross feels the guilty that it is. Jimmy feels this type of way because he comes to realization that since he was too preoccupied with his fantasied love, he had gotten one of his soldiers killed. Jimmy tries to escape from the feeling of guilt as he becomes delusional and devastated.

Most Vietnam veterans with PTSD tend to experience dissociation. There are many experiences Lieutenant Jimmy Cross endures during the Vietnam war that contribute his PTSD. One of the main contributions to his PTSD is Ted Lavender’s death and Martha’s love. Lavender’s death and Martha’s love cause Jimmy Cross to be dissociated with the reality and fantasy. In Bruce Bower’s article, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: Hypnosis and the Divided Self illustrates the effects patients suffer from PTSD as he relates to Vietnam veterans. Throughout the article, Bower relates disorder to the term dissociation. Bower’s definition of dissociation is “a defense against the immediate experience of painful, overwhelming events” (Bower 197). Jimmy Cross dissociates himself from fantasy and reality. Jimmy Cross daydreams a fantasy of Martha to escape the brutal and horrifying experiences of the war. Cross finds himself trapped within a fantasy in which he cannot wake up from. He then fails to recognize how love and war are connected. Jimmy Cross relies on his love for Martha as an escape from war and anxiety. As mentioned in Bower’s article that the post-traumatic stress disorder is an anxiety response. Due to being unable to differentiate his fantasy from reality, Jimmy Cross is seemed to be confused and unable to lead his unit. Thus endangering his fellow soldiers. Yet at one point of the story, Jimmy Cross is able to step out of his fantasy and realize that Martha never loved him. This relates back to Bower’s article for dissociation, when Tim O’Brien witnesses Jimmy Cross break down in his foxhole. As Bower says, “At first dissociation is a positive adaptation to severe trauma” (197). Also when Tim O’Brian says, “In part, he was grieving for Ted Lavender, but mostly it was for Martha, and for himself, because she belonged to another world, which was not quite real, and because she was a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey, a poet and a virgin and uninvolved, and because he realized she did not love him and never would” (336). After this event, Jimmy Cross comes to harsh reality that his love was never waiting for him. This love caused Ted Lavender to die and Jimmy Cross is not able to accept it. 

In The Things They Carried, a traumatic war story by Tim O’Brien portrays numerous descriptions of PTSD from the effects of the Vietnam War. In the story, O’Brien talks about how soldiers go through many traumatic events during wartime that end up changing the person. One of the characters that shows progressing signs of PTSD is First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross. After reading O’Brien’s story, we can conclude that war can change the ways soldiers live and PTSD is one of the negative aspects. Tim O’Brien’s story relates to how soldiers were affected during and after the Vietnam War. The impact of the Vietnam War upon the soldiers was huge.  Even after the Vietnam War, people are still affected with PTSD to even to this today. This ties in with veterans and even soldiers that were deployed after the Vietnam War. Some of the soldiers could not go back to their normal mental state. In the story, we can tell that Jimmy Cross is deeply hurt and traumatized by Lavender’s death and he blames himself for it. It is very evident that First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross has gone through a lot. To conclude, the traumatizing effects of war can change the way a person lives as they try to adapt to their surroundings.



