 
The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien exposes the reality of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) that soldiers faced during and after the Vietnam War.  The mental effect war has on soldiers follows them back home, leaving them struggling to manage their everyday lives.  During the Vietnam War, American soldiers were forced to see the horror of death daily, as O’Brien depicts in his story.  The Things They Carried helps provide a better picture of what the soldiers encountered, and evoke emotions within the readers so they can more fully understand the severity of PTSD among soldiers. O’Brien hopes to display the significance of PTSD and how in modern day, it is often forgotten. Tim O’Brien, in The Things They Carried describes the gory details of the horrors of war because he wants the reader to understand how war veterans often internally carry psychological scars that are sometimes revealed externally by their abnormal behavior.

Following the Vietnam War, soldiers had difficulty immersing back into American culture.  Soldiers felt immense discomfort upon returning home because they experienced frustration regaining their previous mental state, thereby forcing them into seclusion and depression.  American soldiers struggled to find support groups to aid them in their efforts to cope with the horrors they experienced.  Having such a quick transition from the battle grounds back into the States, the soldiers never had time to truly desensitize.  As described by Bower in his writing, he says the soldiers with PTSD described themselves having “split personalities” and having to “keep the tiger in its cage” (Bower 197).  The soldiers struggled with taming the fighter they had to bring out in the war zone, but had to fight to keep the fighter inside of themselves once entering society back in America.  Bower, in his writings, quotes psychiatrist Bruce I. Goderez, who states the tiger that the soldiers describe is “their combat self…hyperalert, belligerent, destructive and well adapted to survival in the war zone” (Bower 197).  During the war, the soldiers unleashed the destructive fighter that O’Brien describes leading to a new personality.  The new personality is a fighter that does not belong in America’s civilized societies of peace and tranquility.  The Vietnam era gave rise to numerous battle fatigue cases because of the lack of support on the battle field and back in America.

The Things They Carried includes various characters that have PTSD and describes how they were crippled by it in different ways.  O’Brien tells tales that the real-life characters encountered and how it affected them.  The characters that will be analyzed all had different side effects of PTSD, but were all hindered.  Malcolm M. Barr describes the symptoms of PTSD, “symptoms include irritability, aggression, memory problems, trouble concentrating, and depression, often with agitation” (Barr 397).  Lt. Cross, Kiowa, and Mitchell Sanders demonstrated these signs and characteristics in the novel.  Being exposed to the environment, the soldiers personified the characteristics of a solder with PTSD.  From Lt. Cross’s concentration problems, to Mitchell Sanders needless aggression; both Lt. Cross’s and Kiowa’s PTSD can be linked to the tragic death of Ted Lavender, who was shot in the head.  The impact lead both soldiers into a deep shell shock, which hindered the soldiers.  The hostile environment of the Vietnam War left numerous soldiers with the issue of not being able to accept reality; they were still, in their mind, living in a war zone constantly engaging with the enemy. 

The first character that O’Brien introduces is First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, who over the course of the book shows strong signs of PTSD.  Lt. Cross shows signs of strong obsession with his believed to be girlfriend Martha from back home.  Martha wrote the Lieutenant letters during his time in Vietnam and Lt. Cross spent his spare time fascinating over them. The letters and pictures seemed to be the only positive thing that the Lieutenant had, so naturally they turned into an obsession.  Cross found himself day dreaming about Martha during their missions as O’Brien describes “And then suddenly, without willing it, he was thinking about Martha” (333).  When Ted Lavender was shot, Lt. Cross was day dreaming and completely lost his situational awareness.  The death of Lavender caused Lt. Cross shell shock and sent him to the breaking point, where he believed that it was his fault that Lavender was shot.  O’Brien goes on to describe how Lt. Cross started showing signs of aggression with his men going on a rampage “They burned everything. They shot chickens and dogs, they trashed the village well, they called in artillery and watched the wreckage” (336).  That night, Lt. Cross began showing more signs of PTSD which included depression and agitation, “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…” (336). This is a prime example of Lt. Cross showing signs of PTSD as he begins to resent and blame himself as O’Brien writes “ He 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” (336).  Since the death of Lavender, Lieutenant Cross began to show prominent signs of PTSD. The depression and agitation described above are the expected symptoms of PTSD that Barr describes. Which Lt. Cross had to learn to cope with PTSD during his time in Vietnam by removing the triggers that lead him to the mental state.

In The Things They Carried Tim O’Brien introduces the soldier Kiowa who, like Lt. Cross, begins to show signs of PTSD after witnessing the death of Lavender.  Kiowa was affected by PTSD when he witnessed the death of Lavender as O’Brien describes “Ted Lavender was shot in the head on his way back from peeing. He lay with his mouth open. The teeth were broken. There was a swollen black bruise under his left eye. The cheekbone was gone. Oh shit, Rat Kiley said, the guy’s dead. The guy’s dead, he kept saying, which seemed profound-the guy’s dead. I mean really” (334). Kiowa went into shell shock after the tragic scene of death and was in disbelief of the situation as O’Brien describes, “Kiowa kept explaining how you had to be there, how fast it was, how the poor guy just dropped like so much concrete. Boom-down, he said. Like cement” (331).  O’Brien goes on describing in the next quote promoting Kiowa’s PTSD by further describing how Kiowa was haunted and depressed by the death, “He tried not to think about Ted Lavender, but then he was thinking how fast it was, no drama, down and dead, and how it was hard to feel anything except surprise” (337).  Kiowa shows signs of desensitization and shell shock as he struggles to muster up any more emotions other than shock and depression of the fact.  O’Brien goes on to describe Kiowa’s thoughts about struggling to find emotions, “He wished he could find some great sadness, or even anger, but the emotion wasn’t there and he couldn’t make it happen” (337).  The thought of Lavender’s death kept Kiowa from even sleeping envisioning the scene is his head while trying to sleep “when he closed his eyes, all he could think was Boom-down,” (O’Brien 337).  Kiowa’s own personal experience of witnessing a death caused him to have severe PTSD symptoms and mental health issues.  Witnessing the death of the enemy, or their own friends, exposed soldiers to extreme guilt and depression. 

The last case of PTSD in O’Brien’s novel is Mitchell Sanders, an insensible soldier that has had his mind taken over by the senseless, belligerent, and destructive split personality “tiger” that Goderez warns about.  O’Brien writes about Sanders as an out of line soldier who struggles with mental stability.  Mitchell Sanders arrived in Vietnam a normal man, but overtime he became engrossed in the war and began to lose his sense of compassion and reverence. Sander’s actions display the aggression Barr and Goderez describes that is associated with PTSD. Mitchell shows his aggression and destructiveness when he presents a thumb of a human as a gift to a fellow soldier.  The story that O’Brien writes about shows how PTSD can change a man into something else, “he put his hand on the dead boy’s wrist. He was quiet for a time, as if counting a pulse, then he patted the stomach, almost affectionately, and used Kiowa’s hunting hatchet to remove the thumb” (334).  Mitchell goes on to state his opinion that it was “there’s a definite moral here” (O’Brien 334).  This shows that Mitchell has lost all sensibility, and then O’Brien finishes with describing his final actions: “smiling, he kicked the boy’s head, watched the flies scatter, and said, It’s like with that old TV show-Paladin. Have gun, will travel” (334).  Mitchell had lost all sense of humanity and shows that he has serious PTSD that would not be accepted in today’s military standard.  O’Brien writes about Mitchell to show the readers the harshness that the soldiers encountered and what they dealt with daily.  Mitchell Sanders let his  destructive and senseless “tiger” that Goderez describes grow too strong and left all his sensibility behind.  Therefore, leading him to a dark reality that many soldiers faced during war and after the war.  The emotions soldiers encountered after the war were a mix of either guilt or desensitization to the atrocities they faced while fighting the enemy.

In conclusion, O’Brien was influenced to provide readers an insight on how PTSD effected soldiers in the Vietnam War.  With the three key soldiers that O’Brien writes about, it is not hard to see the different signs of PTSD that psychologist like Barr and Goderez depict.  This parallel is evident because of O’Brien’s writing is descriptive and graphic enough to portray the realities of war. These depictions of PTSD allow readers to understand the mental breakdown that the Vietnam War had on soldiers. O’Brien captures how the harsh environment of Vietnam led to many soldiers’ confusion as they returned home. He observes the different types of PTSD and how that can change the mind and attitude of a soldier. He delivers examples on different outcomes soldiers receive upon returning home from war. Whether a soldier had no emotion or too much emotions to control, soldiers, according to O’Brien need support. The Things They Carried proves that a soldier might leave a battlefield with a different mental attitude and lifestyle.
 