Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is a debilitating disorder that effects about 3 million people per year. It is distinguished by the inability to recover after experiencing a traumatic event. Although this condition can affect many, it most commonly affects war veterans. Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried focuses on soldiers before, during, and after the Vietnam War. War is cruel, harsh and can completely alters the one’s attitudes and behavior.  By looking at The Things They Carried, we can see the true consequences of war and how PTSD affects veterans. 

Throughout the story, it is frequently mentioned that the soldiers are “carrying” items, whether it is metaphorically or physically. The soldiers all carried items that were of value to them from home, or necessities for war. Other items they carried refers to the emotional baggage that they brought with them. In The Things They Carried, Tim’s friend Jimmy carries letters from his loved one, Martha. During the war, he constantly reads these letters so he can remain mentally stable. Jimmy realizes during the war that Martha is out living her own life without him and he cannot be with her. This only adds to the emotional baggage he has been carrying, and stresses him out even more. After the war, Jimmy has a feeling of resentment towards Martha and no longer wants to be with her. This is the perfect example of how war times can completely alter your feelings and thoughts, especially because Jimmy used to love her so much that he packed her letters with him and carried them during the war and now he barely has irrational thoughts towards her. 

One of Tim’s closest friends, Kiowa, carried items of sentimental value such as moccasins, his grandfather’s hatchet, and a Bible. The Bible was a very important item to Kiowa and he brings it with him so that he can remain sane through times of despair. Rather than bringing items of necessity, Kiowa brings items of personal value to always keep in touch with who he was before the war. His faith is one of the most important things to him, as he states that he feels most comfortable in churches. In the beginning of the story, Kiowa is emotional and firm in his faith. At the end, he is emotionless and torn. War had completely drained Kiowa of being able to experience negative or positive feelings at all. “He wished he could find some great sadness, or even anger.” (O’Brien 337). This demonstrates the emotional damage that PTSD causes and the toll it takes on one’s mood.  Additionally, this shows that no matter how hard Kiowa tried to prevent emotional distress, he was still affected by this condition because that’s how serious it really is. 

Emily Ozer explains in her article, "Who Develops Post Traumatic Stress Disorder", that war veterans are the most likely to develop PTSD. As we can see in many of the characters throughout The Things They Carried, traumatic events can completely alter one’s emotions and behaviors. After war most people come back and completely different person, and some are never able to recover. PTSD affected about thirty percent of soldiers in the Vietnam war (Ozer 170). Author Tim O’Brien purposely introduces the characters before they are affected by war so that we are able to compare them before and after war and see what kind of toll the war had on each character. It is evident that many soldiers do experience PTSD because of how many characters we saw undergo emotional damage.

Matthew Friedman’s article “Understanding PTSD” was written to inform the reader about what post-traumatic stress disorder is really like and how it affects such a large crowd of people. His article thoroughly explains what it is like to be affected by PTSD, and The things They Carried clearly portrays each of the signs in the characters. Each of the characters go from normal, happy lives to barely being able to experience any emotions at all. The true terror of war cannot be fathomed by someone who has not experienced it before, but O’Brien and Friedman both are excellent sources in beginning to explain the feeling of such a dark time. “…They often confront the worst horrors of human cruelty and malevolence” (6) Friedman elaborates on how horrible and traumatizing war truly is so that the reader can gain insight as to how seriously PTSD affects veterans. 

War is an awful and unfathomable event unlike anything else one could experience. It is not something you can explain to someone, but rather something they would have to experience themselves to ever remotely be able to understand. Soldiers have seen some of the most gory things we could possibly imagine and have to do inhumane things that we would never even consider doing such as killing other people. Sometimes it is very easy to forget the risk that these soldiers are taking by fighting for us, but these veterans are affected by war for the rest of their lives, and some soldiers go through PTSD even twenty years post-war. The emotional distress that O’Brien portrays through his characters is just the beginning of how harsh PTSD really can be. War changes one’s perspective entirely and leaves its victims scarred for the rest of their lives, as we can see in Jimmy and Kiowa. 

By looking at The Things They Carried, we can see the emotional distress that war causes on soldiers and their experiences with post-traumatic stress disorder. The baggage each soldier carries is a metaphor for the emotional distress they are carrying during war. Tim O’Brien tells a story of him and his fellow soldiers before and after the Vietnam War to inform his readers about the harsh truth of PTSD. This condition is very serious while it affects millions of soldiers every year and completely alters the attitude and behavior of someone. Post-traumatic stress disorder is physically invisible yet very apparent to the victim and extremely important to be aware of. 
