
Tim O’Brien’s, “The Things They Carried” is a story about a battalion of soldiers and their experiences in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. The soldiers in the story exhibited traits of those who have come home from wars and been diagnosed with posttraumatic stress syndrome. The fighting styles of the Vietnamese were very costly with regards to casualties throughout the war. Tim O’Brien’s, “The Things They Carried,” is about American soldiers coping with the Vietnam War. Based on research it can be concluded that many of the soldiers in the story showed symptoms of Posttraumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD) because of the way that the character acted throughout the excerpt.

The Vietnam War was a war fought in the jungle something no United States soldier has ever experienced. They also used a fighting style of surprise attacks on troops that U.S. troops had also never experienced. Because of this troops being deployed to Vietnam were greatly ill prepared for what they would encounter while in the foreign land. As it can be seen in the story, troops often wandered aimlessly through the jungle without a real understanding of their mission and objectives to get there. The Homefront of the war also lacked complete backing of the troops being sent overseas. The citizens of the United States did not understand and resented the governments involvement in the conflict. The way that the war was fought by both the United States’ unfamiliarity with the area and the Vietnamese’s usage of the area gave way to lots of violence and combat that the soldiers were faced with. The combat level many troops were exposed to, gave way to the diagnosis of posttraumatic stress syndrome to a large number of troops upon returning home. It is estimated that approximately 15% of male soldiers would have been diagnosed with the disease upon arrival home from Vietnam. PTSD is defined as a disorder that makes it difficult to cope with memories and feelings resulting from the exposure to a terrifying event, in this case the Vietnam War. The troops were diagnosed with this disease because the troops were unable to cope with regular normal life back home in the States. 

 The soldiers in the excerpt of the book “carried” various items that made them relaxed and kept their mind off of the war. They carried things such as, items that reminded them of home, things to do during their off time to keep them entertained and some practical objects. Objects that were given to them for what they would encounter such as guns, ammunition, ponchos, first aid kits, and communication devices. Some had specific purposes, others just to give the mentality of safety. They did this because they were experiencing feelings and symptoms we know now to be related to PTSD. It can be seen throughout the story the great amount of combat that the soldiers endure. Through the large amount of combat the soldiers also witness some of their fellow comrades losing of their lives. Lynn August describes 4 criteria that must be met for a veteran to be diagnosed with PTSD. In essence, the criteria that she describes is that they must have gone through a stressor that is determined to be extreme and/or atypical. The individual re-experiences events experienced within the event during nightmares. The individual must also experience at least 2 symptoms of a group of symptoms made up by irritability, memory impairment, survival guilt, startle response and sleep disturbance. The fourth and final criteria that is outlined is to have developed a sense of detachment in normal life (822). 

The first criteria that must be made by an individual is for that individual to have a stressor. The men in the book have this first criteria checked off. The individuals all are overseas in Vietnam during the war. Not only are these characters in Vietnam but they are in the height of the fight. They are patrolling the middle of the jungle always on alert for ambushes by the Vietnamese. One instance that shows the severity of mental strain is when the soldiers have to check a tunnel occupied by the Vietnamese for any insurgents. They do this by crawling through the tunnel with a pistol. Judging by the amount of combat the soldiers see, in my opinion they all have a very extreme and severe stressor that could easily haunt them and mess with the soldiers so they make the qualifications for this first criteria. The second criteria described by August in the article, is that the individual re-experiences events that took place during the time period of the stressor through dreams. This criterion is not clear for the sense of this book. The excerpt found in the Carolina Reader is not the whole book so upon reading more of the story we may be able to check this criterion as well but with only the excerpt, there is no sense of life after the war where they may or may not have experienced dreams related to old experiences. However, some soldiers, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, in particular, has a routine that can be seen in the book. He lays in the hole he digs every night to sleep in and looks at notes and pictures of a girl, Martha, from back home. There is no way to tell for sure but there is a possibility that if the Lieutenant had not done this every night to calm his mind or even perhaps drown out the world he was in, he could have maybe experienced this. There is no explicit evidence in the story because it does not extend to at home life after the war where the greatest chance of this happening there is still evidence of an individual doing something that may have kept him from experiencing such dreams.

The third criteria spoken of is that they must display at least 2 of the symptoms. One symptom that all of the soldiers exhibit is that they all have survival guilt when they survive while their comrade Ted Lavender loses his life in the war. They feel bad that he is the one that has died and all feel like they have reasons they should have been in his position and died instead of him or that they were the reason that he did. They have thoughts that maybe if they would have done something different they could have prevented something this horrific from occurring. Another symptom, startle response, cannot be completely seen in the book because of the excerpt’s small time window and only taking place during the war. Startle response is something that the soldiers could have experienced upon coming home from the war because of experiences of explosions and gunfire characterized with the war. The fourth and final criteria August describes that must be made, is that the individual experiences a sense of detachment and loss of interest of the “real world.” This characteristic is also something that can easily be seen in Lieutenant Jimmy Cross. Through most of the excerpt the narrator describes his obsession with Martha, a girl from home, whom he has letters from and  a torn-out picture of. The Lieutenant regularly lays in his fox hole at night and reads the letters and imagines Martha and what she may be doing back home.  Close to the end of the excerpt Jimmy Cross, somewhat out of the blue, burns all of the letters and pictures with his Sterno burner and leaves them behind in his fox hole. (O’Brien 339-340) This shows a detachment from the real world back home because he is cutting off his connection with his home life. These pictures and letters have seemed to be his crutch and his escape to make it through the war and then he just burns them and leaves behind. In a sense leaving behind the U.S. and normalcy and trying to take his guilt and anger off of himself.

   Research shows that a study done by Bruce Dohrenw shows that “one in three” men returning home from Vietnam were diagnosed with posttraumatic stress syndrome (979). This statistic includes all men returning home. This includes both, men who were always leading attacks and on the front lines of the conflict and those who never once saw any instances of combat. Because of this there is another figure in his article. The graphic breaks down the soldiers self-proclaimed level of combat compared to their mental stability when returned home (980). What can be seen from the graphic is that the ones with the more self-proclaimed levels of combat experienced have the higher levels of mental instability and likewise can be inferred the higher percentage of veterans who were diagnosed with PTSD. Judging by the character of the story and their presumably middle to high level of combat the individuals experienced and then also with the one of every three statistic it can be inferred that at least one to two of the characters returned home with PTSD. It can be inferred because there is roughly six different individuals in the battalion in the story so just by the one in three there would be at least two individuals that would have displayed symptoms of PTSD and then have been diagnosed with it.

Before doing research, I knew that Vietnam had a lot of negative outcomes on the veterans coming home from the war psychologically and that the combat in the war was completely different than from any other war but I did not know very much about the PTSD levels in veterans from the war. The excerpt does show and tell how much war can take away from the life that a soldier was used to upon coming home from the war. That is why so many of the characters in the story had “things” that they carried. Some of those things from home to remind them of home and take their mind back home and away from the war. Others, like their weapons and other military issued items also gave them various feelings like a feeling of being safe even though it is evident they rarely were.  One thing that I feel as though I have learned from the research of the history of this period is how much war was a mind game. Often war is all about the weapons and destruction a side is able to inflict but even within that side the soldiers doing the destruction must be mentally sound as well as physically sound. 
