
By 1975, over 1,353,000 people from Vietnam, the United States, and other Allied countries had been killed, victims of the malicious Vietnam war. These numbers include not only soldiers but civilians as well that were caught in the cross fire and met their unfortunate demise. Tim O’Brien is a Vietnam war veteran and an author who wrote his novels based on some of his traumatic experiences during war. One of his best-known works is The Things They Carried which tells the story of a young lieutenant Jimmy Cross and his men fighting in the Vietnam war. Lieutenant Jimmy Cross is absorbed in his love for a girl back home named Martha. This distraction takes away from his leadership ability and puts his men in harm’s way. His failure as a leader is evident when one of his men, Ted Lavender, is shot and killed. Cross blames himself for fantasizing about Martha and not paying close attention to their surroundings. He carries that burden with him throughout the text which later causes him to change his priorities as a leader. Even though he changes his priorities, Cross is emotional scarred from these life changing events that will be with him for the rest if his life. The Vietnam war was a violent war that caused PTSD in many soldiers. The harsh effects of war left emotional burdens for soldiers to carry as illustrated by Lieutenant Jimmy Cross and his men. Through repetition, tone, and conflict, O’Brien shows his own insight into the mind of a war veteran.

The Vietnam War was one of the largest massacres of soldiers in the history of the United States. By most accounts, Vietnam was the site of one of the most brutal and destructive of the wars between Western imperial powers and the people of Asia, Africa, and Latin America (Le Espiritu 1700). Many people died pointless deaths in Vietnam because American soldiers didn’t know or understand what they were even fighting for. The lack of communication between leaders and the soldiers was horrible which led to many unnecessary deaths. Public opinion polls over the years consistently have shown that two out of three Americans believe the war was a "mistake," but few claim to know what we should have done differently (Starr 241). While the war might have been a mistake, it happened and changed our soldiers’ lives forever. Many of them are left them with feelings of regret and sorrow for the rest of their lives.

After experiencing a traumatizing event, a person can suffer symptoms of PTSD which is a common occurrence for war veterans. Post-traumatic stress disorder is usually exposure to a traumatic event to which the person has felt intense fear, helplessness, or horror.

A victim of PTSD may re-experience the traumatic event in recurrent, intrusive, and distressing images, thoughts, or perceptions. Other common factors may include, persistent avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma, accompanied by a numbing of general responsiveness which wasn't present before the trauma. Persistent symptoms of increased arousal, such as hypervigilance or exaggerated startle response, which weren't present before the trauma (Clark 27).

PTSD causes the person to constantly think of the terrible incident and to remember every detail. Things that remind the person of the incident can cause the victim to lose control and possibly have a panic attack. “Participation in armed conflicts results in a multitude of adverse health outcomes, including emotional and psychological conditions from real and perceived exposures” (Smith 91). Many soldiers experience PTSD, and Tim O’Brien is one of those people. 

O’Brien, who went through a lot while fighting overseas, writes about his experiences is his novels. The burden and traumatizing events that occurred have left an impact on his life. The reader can infer from O’Brien’s tone in the text that he has trouble expressing feelings. He is abrupt and not very sympathetic when he says, “Ted Lavender was shot in the head on the way back from peeing. He lay with his mouth open. The teeth were broken. There was a swollen black bruise under his eye (334). O’Brien has a bland tone when describing the death of Lavender and has trouble conveying a sense of sympathy. O’Brien is numb to emotions from the war so he cannot express them. This is a side effect of PTSD. In addition to a bland tone, O’Brien uses repetition to explain what soldiers carried in war. “Lieutenant and platoon leader Jimmy Cross carried a compass, code books, binoculars, and a .45 caliber pistol that weighed 2.9 pounds fully loaded. He carried a strobe light and the responsibility for the lives of his men. As RTO, Mitchell Sanders carried the PRC-25 radio, a killer, 26 pounds…Henry Dubbins carried the M-60, which weighed 23 pounds unloaded” (330). He is constantly repeating the burden of items the soldiers had to carry in war in great detail. O’Brien must have struggled with some psychological damage when he returned home from the Vietnam war. From his text the reader can infer that remembers everything that happened to him while he was fighting. This text is a fictional representation of what exactly happened to him or people he knew overseas. When O’Brien returned home, he felt the need to express himself through words, “I had something to say: I had witnessed things, smelled things, imagined things which struck me as startling and terrifying and intriguing in all sorts of ways” (McCaffery 131). The war changed O’Brien and he felt like the only way for him to reenter society was to write down all his experiences. Writing was his form of therapy. All these images and details of war were spinning in his head and the only way to overcome this was to let it all out. But letting all that pain and that suffering out sometimes can do harm before it does any good. “The good judgment of war disappeared and surrealism took over. The mind of the soldier becomes part of the experience-the brain seems to flow out of your head, joining the elements around you on the battlefield. It's like stepping outside yourself. War is a surreal experience, therefore it seems quite natural and proper for a writer to render some of its aspects in a surreal way” (McCaffery 135). Some surreal elements in the text include the soldiers endlessly marching through villages in the sweltering heat to get to their next position. They would cause damage to the villages and do whatever they wanted but they never had a purpose to be destructive. It just happened and they don’t really know why. Also watching Lavender die was dreamlike for the men. He was there one moment and then he was gone. Watching the chopper take his body did not feel real at all. They felt like if they waited five minutes then Lavender would show up again. But the building up of this surrealism inside a person can cause that person to slowly lose their mind. After returning home from war, O’Brien had trouble processing what had truly happened while overseas. Our minds can trick us after experiencing great distress. So it’s unclear to the reader if all the things O’Brien writes about truly happened or if he made them up thinking they were true. O’Brien had experienced traumatizing events while being at war which could have caused him to have symptoms of PTSD once he returned home.

Not being focused on a task can hurt you in the end; Lieutenant Jimmy Cross learns this the hard way when his dying love for Martha diverts his attention from the war and his men. Lieutenant Jimmy Cross fights the inexpressible fear the men share by obsessing about a girl he wants to love and substituting the unoriginality of her letters for the reality of Vietnam. After Lavender's death, Cross digs a foxhole and gives in to uncontrolled weeping. Finally, despite the rain, he burns the letters. Accepting the "blame" for his soldiers’ death, he resolves to be a leader, not a lover, determined to perform his duties firmly and without negligence (Wesley 6). Cross is carrying a huge burden on his shoulders. He feels like if he hadn’t been so wrapped up thinking about Martha then Lavender would still be alive. All this burden and guilt will haunt him for the rest of his life. He will probably experience psychological problems like PTSD later in his life. 

“Henceforth, when he thought about Martha, it would be only to think that she belonged elsewhere. He would shut down the daydreams. This was not Mount Sebastian, it was another world, where there were no pretty poems or midterm exams, a place where men died because of carelessness and gross stupidity…he would except blame for what happened to Ted Lavender. He would be man about it” (340-341). 

Cross forces himself to let go of his feelings for Martha so he can focus being a great leader. To be a better leader, Cross changes his priorities to make sure that not another one of his men would die due to his carelessness. Unfortunately, Cross will never forget what happened during the war and he will probably remember every detail. No matter how much Cross wants to forget, it will stay with him the rest of his life. Doing your required tasks is very important and when you don’t it properly there can be some regrettable consequences.  

The Vietnam war was a violent war that took the lives of many innocent people. In addition, it left soldiers with lingering psychological damage like PTSD after returning home to their families. PTSD is an emotional burden for soldiers to carry especially for Lieutenant Jimmy Cross and Tim O’Brien. Both men have to live with their actions and try to move on from it. Jimmy Cross moved on by changing his priorities but that might not resolve all the damage that was done to his mind and conscience. O’Brien chose to write all his experiences down in the form of a novel. This is a coping mechanism for O’Brien in order to live with himself and enjoy the rest of his life. Be more intuitive with your actions and know what you are fighting for in your life so you will have no regrets. While the Vietnam war is in the past, the countless stories passed on from generation to generation will never be forgotten. Knowing about the war and the damage it caused on countless peoples’ lives can help prevent future occurrences from happening.
