





A typical day of combat during the Vietnam War consisted of explosions going off everywhere, shots fired from both sides, and friends lost. But the soldiers who do survive have witnessed events that they should have never seen. The soldiers saw people die right in front of them, villages destroyed in warfare, and people suffering because of a wounds or diseases. These events could have caused the soldier to have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which many soldiers fighting in the Vietnam suffered. In the story The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, a platoon of soldiers fighting during the Vietnam War shows how soldier were affected with PTSD. O’Brien’s story incorporates how a platoon of soldiers fighting during the Vietnam War who suffer from PTSD.

PTSD was not a disease diagnosed to war veterans until 1980. Many doctors did know soldiers suffered through traumatic events but they did not know what to diagnose them with.  “In fact, one cannot make a PTSD diagnosis unless the patient has actually met the ‘stressor criterion,’ which means that he or she has been exposed to an event that is considered traumatic”(Friedman). One event that could have happened that caused this is fighting in a war. After the Vietnam War PTSD became a serious disease. When 15% of the soldiers who came back with PTSD, the researchers knew it was very serious. It was called an anxiety disease for many years but now it is a stress-related disorder. The cause of this disease is an exposure to a tragic event that someone was not supposed to see. For example, witnessing someone dying or going through a painful and stressful event that would not happen in a typical day. Some veterans who have PTSD have trouble keeping jobs in the real world. Not to mention, the soldiers also had trouble showing emotions after witnessing a tragic event. Also, “Many veterans report having dreams about being pursued, trapped, shot at, and/or left with an empty weapon”(Norman 1696). This showed that the Veterans could not get past the war. Even though the war was over, it was still haunting them to this day. PTSD in soldiers could also be caused by the guilt they had during the war. For example, they felt upset about killing the enemy or could not have saved one of their friends from dying. PTSD became a very serious disease after the Vietnam War. The doctors finally realized what caused this disease and what symptoms the soldiers might have, so they could diagnose them with PTSD. 

In the story, The Things They Carried by, Tim O’Brien, we follow a platoon of soldiers during the Vietnam War. Each soldier in this story carries all different things, like certain candies or a bible. Besides the real objects they had to carry, they also had emotional things they had to carry throughout the war. They have to carry the guilt of killing human beings and some of them have to carry the guilt of losing someone in their group. Another thing most of the troops had to carry is the emotional things from home. Some thought that they would never see them again and others thought that they would have changed when they came back. But the most important thing they had to carry was their lives. So this novel relates to the history of PTSD by first of all it was the first war that PTSD was officially a disease after. Another thing that relates to PTSD is that you can see the soldiers starting to deteriorate during the war and see that the war is officially taking over the soldiers. One of the soldiers starts blaming himself for the death of his comrade, when in fact that he had no chance of saving his life. That is one of the first signs of PTSD. The second sign of PTSD in this story is that one of the soldiers just lost the feeling of love. He used to be obsessed with his girl when he was home but as soon as one tragic event happened during the war, he just lost that feeling completely. He used to hold letters from this girl and read them everyday. But now he just lost it and burned the letters and just did not feel the love anymore. Lastly the soldiers just lost the feeling of being human. For example, they would cut off a dead kid’s thumb and keep it and then start to kick the kid’s head. That just shows that they lost their morality and would do inhuman stuff to dead kids. You would not see that on a typical day back home. But the soldiers did not care about what they did at the war to the dead. The Vietnam War left a mark on many of the veterans and changed them. In Tim O’Brien’s story it shows how the war started to hit them and how they started to get symptoms of PTSD. 

Warfare always had their casualties; many soldiers die during wars and one of the casualties in this story was Ted Lavender. When Ted Lavender died, Jimmy Cross blamed himself for Lavender’s death. Jimmy was thinking of Martha when Ted died and blamed himself for not paying attention to the surroundings. He thought that if he were watching the surroundings that Lavender would still be alive. The guilt of Lavender’s death grew on Jimmy Cross and he could never get passed that. For instance, Lavender thought, “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 336). This shows that Jimmy feels so bad about Lavender’s death and that he has to carry the thought of him dying throughout the rest of his life. “PTSD is the characteristic symptoms following a psychologically traumatic event that is outside the usual range of human experience” (Norman 1696). And Lavender’s death was Jimmy’s tragic event. Throughout this story Tim O’Brien keeps on bringing up that Cross feeling guilty for Lavender’s death and the guilt is one sign of the start of PTSD. Jimmy cannot get the image of Ted’s dead body out of his mind and forgets everything he cared about before that event. He is haunted by the death and that was one of the tragic events that could have caused him to have PTSD. Seeing a person you care about die right in front of year will scar you forever. Jimmy will never forgive himself for Lavender’s death and that was the start of him getting PTSD.

Jimmy Cross started to lose the feeling of love throughout this war. “Veterans report having difficulty expressing love and empathy”(Norman 1696), and this is what happened to Jimmy. Before he was shipped to Vietnam to fight in this war. He was in love with this girl named Martha. He would think of her everyday and wished he was with her. Even in the beginning of the war he was still in love with Martha. He used to read her letters all the time and look at the picture of her any time he got the chance to. Jimmy also held on to a pebble that Martha had sent him from the beach. He called it his lucky pebble and thought that it would keep him safe. But after Ted Lavender’s death all of that had changed. He started blaming himself for the death and thought if he was not thinking of Martha at the time of Ted’s death, that he would still be alive. “On the morning after Ted Lavender died, First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross crouched at the bottom of his fox hole and burned Martha’s letters”(O’Brien 339). Jimmy thought of doing this so he would stop thinking about the girl he loved and think more about his troops. Which it did, but his love for her also turned into hate for her. He started to hate her because of Lavender’s death. PTSD victims have a hard time trying to show emotion and one emotion very hard to display for those victims is love. Jimmy was in deep love with Martha but his love for her started to diminish throughout time. He started to hate her more and more when time went by. His emotions for back home started to diminish and his feelings started to go away. He probably started to have PTSD when Ted died and his lack of emotions after the death is a reason why. 

Lastly, the environment of war could have caused you to have PTSD. The soldiers in the Vietnam War were in horrible conditions during the war. “PTSD cases are concentrated among those veterans who experienced heavy combat or were otherwise exposed to high ‘war zone stress’”(Roberts 241). They sometimes had to sleep in ditches and sometimes got their clothes wet and had to sleep in them. In the story The Things They Carried the soldiers had to witness deaths, explosions, and just civilizations burning to the ground. They have witnessed villages burning and warfare alone. They also had to carry heavy materials in the heat and walk up hills for many hours. The gruesome environment could get to the soldiers and their morality could changed. Some of the men had to crawl in a tiny cave and hope it doesn’t cave in. But their morality did changed in this story by before the war if they saw a dead body they would be disgusted and avoid it. But during the war, they saw a dead boy and they cut of his thumb and kicked his head. The war changed these men and the men witnessed tragic events in the war. The war got to them and PTSD started to hit them and change their morality. They have witnessed things that they should have never seen and they cannot get those images out of their heads ever. Some have nightmares about those events and haunt them. The war changed these men and they were never the same after it.

In the story The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien writes about a troop of soldiers during the Vietnam War and eludes how some of them started to develop PTSD. They saw horrific events that they should have never seen and some of their emotions started to go away. PTSD is a serious disease now and many soldiers get it after the war. Battles in war are a very serious thing and the battle might not stop even though the war has. The historical information made me realize that these soldiers had problems all the time, mental and physical. But the physical war could end but the mental war might last forever and PTSD might never end. 





