     The way culture shapes society is based on time period and public views of current events. Often times wars can cause be defended by public opinion or can cause social outrage.  Soldiers put their life on the line for their country and often end up making the ultimate sacrifice, however, the way they are looked at in society depends on their condition not their sacrifice. By looking at soldiers in terms of how they were treated by society overtime we can see that people are often unsympathetic towards veterans. Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” creates a more humane and therefore more sympathetic view of veterans. This is important because veteran’s mental healthcare has been dramatically slashed over the years.

      In the 21st century most people idolize those who have served, often restaurants reward those who are on active military duty a discount or some sort of promotion. Soldiers who returned from World War Two were greeted with huge “Homecoming parades” (Bia 2013).These men were looked at as heroes and glamorized in the public spotlight. However, things were quite different from the 1960’s to the 1970’s as the United States took part in the Vietnam War as public support of the war declined significantly over the course. In the year 1965 only 20 percent of the public opposed the war, however, by 1975 more than 75 percent of the nation supported the withdrawal of all troops from Vietnam (Lunch, Sperlich 26). With the low support of the war, those who were returning did not get the large parades or welcoming parties. Many Vietnam Veterans were booed as they got back to the United States, and some even had trash thrown at them. One account in particular portrayed great disgust towards a veteran returning home from combat, “my flight came in at San Francisco airport and I was spat upon three time: by hippies, by a man in leisure suit, and by a sweet old lady who informed me I was an ‘Army Asshole’” said Barry Streeter, a Vietnam Veteran. These men returned to a nation which had been divided “the late 1960s and early 1970s were rife with marches, rallies, demonstrations, street protest, inflammatory rhetoric…people arrested, campuses occupied, and students shot and killed by the national guardsmen” (Lemboke 77). Those who returned from war were perceived as part of the problem, not with the heroic outlook that they risked their lives for their country.

     Society has two ways of viewing those who go through the life threatening battles of war. Often those who served are captured in a heroic form. In the iconic picture of the United states soldiers casting the American flag over Iwo Jima, (which was later made into a statue) portrays this heroic form a soldier. These men are strong and have fought for their county portraying superhuman qualities. Their dedication to their country causes some people to believe that because they have been through so much that they are invincible and can handle any problem they face. However, the reality is that going through such horrific events can cause them many problems, including amputations and mental illnesses. When soldiers are seen in this manner they are often looked at as subhuman. The most common mental illness from war is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. One article in particular by Robert S. Laufe and Ellen Frey-Wouters studied the relationship between “abusive violence” or any horrific scenarios, and the link to PTSD. The article looked into two separate studies “The Stress Scale” and the “Psychiatric Epidemiology Research Instrument”, which asked Vietnam veterans on two separate occasions, one right after combat and the other 12 months post combat, if they had experienced any known symptoms of PTSD which include “feeling of guilt…feeling of demoralized…feelings of anger…active expression of hostility” (72). The studies suggested that the “abusive violence” had a link with PTSD. Abusive violence varied drastically in the Vietnam War, one example provided in the article was experiencing “poor (Vietnamese) running around in rags” after their villages had been burned down by American troops and their lives destroyed (76). The struggles of life after combat are a challenging step that many veterans face. Experiencing such terrible events caused “veterans' frequent dreams of their friends dying in battle, and by their avoidance of interpersonal intimacy because they fear the other party may abandon them or die” (Glover 396). Those who lived through these event are often looked down on as mentally ill, but the things they went through are often burned into their minds and all the soldiers were doing was following orders. 

     Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” provides a great insight on the real life soldier, capturing the human side of the war, and the real tragedies that the men went through. Day to day soldiers are asked to follow orders of their Lieutenant “by daylight they took sniper fire, at night they were mortared, but it was not battle, it was just the endless march, village to village, without purpose, nothing won or lost" (O’Brien 15). The young men had no say in what they were to do, it all fell on the shoulders of Lieutenant Cross, who experienced his own share of PTSD symptoms. One day on a routine patrol Ted Lavender was shot in the head “it was a bright morning in mid-April. Lieutenant Cross felt the pain. He blamed himself” (O’Brien 330) Cross felt the pain because the men were his responsibility to keep safe. Shortly after they prepared the body for evacuation via helicopter “Lieutenant Cross kept to himself. He pictured Martha’s smooth young face, thinking he loved her more than anything, more than his men, and now Ted Lavender was dead because he loved her so much and he could not stop thinking about her” (O’Brien 331). This shows the beginning struggles of PTSD as Lieutenant Cross had feelings of guilt. These feelings of guilt then lead to another symptom of PTSD known as demoralization and expression of anger when “the dust off came, they carried Lavender aboard. Afterward they burned Than Khe (a nearby village), and marched until dusk” (O’Brien 331). Cross was angry that the Vietnam had killed one of his friends and in a demoralized state he took his anger out by burning down the village and marching his men late. This was his way of dealing with the pain, a sort of “pay back”, however in the end this did not help. Throughout the story Lieutenant Cross often finds himself in a feeling of guilt over the death of Ted Lavender, whether he is cry, or “found himself trembling” (O’Brien 336), this was something Cross had to live with for the rest of his life.  

     The general public has many different viewpoints of soldiers. While in modern time, they are looked at as heroes and strong men and women, it was not always the same case. When veterans return they can come back changed, whether it is a physical change such as having a leg or amputated or a mental change that cannot be described by those who did not go through the same events. War changes people, and while many believe that they had the straight to fight in war, and that they can handle anything, that is a big misunderstanding. Soldiers need the benefits of mental health care and the support of their community to help them transition back to reality of an everyday life.
