It is evident throughout the course of history that no one survives war without wounds. These wounds manifest themselves in different ways, sometimes mental and other times physical. In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, we receive a first hand account of the war through the eyes of a solider. The raw emotion throughout this text is palpable, and serves to provide the reader with a deep sense of culture and the environment in which the soldiers lived and how it affected them. Through both an article on findings from from a military readjustment study, and another article published by the National Institute of Health on PTSD, it is clear that the mental health of our soldiers is in serious jeopardy.   Behind all of the media and propaganda in the 60s and 70s, there is a harsh reality of war that is a meaningless power struggle yielding endless destruction just to test how strong we are.  The reality of war is composed of the agony and strife that comes with such intense senseless conflict. There is no victor in war, when all's said and done everyone’s a victim of societal expectations and an overwhelming sense of guilt. In order to preserve the mental and physical health of so many, steps must be taken to develop a pacifistic society.

It is known that war veterans have consistently struggled with assimilating back into society post-conflict. The first source I researched to support this claim was an article from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs by Jennifer L. Price. The article is An article written by Jennifer L. Price is centered around findings from the National Vietnam Veterans’ Readjustment Study explaining that explain the correlation between the how depending on the specific circumstances someone was under in the war, are directly proportionate to and the level of PTSD that same person will suffer from down the road. Men and women who were stationed on the front lines were known as “Vietnam theater Veterans” (Price 2), and were consistently subject to ambushes and guerilla warfare tactics unseen up until this point in history. Being in an environment with stress levels of that magnitude, it is no wonder why so many men came home with various types of mental illness. The number of casualties and those impacted on the front lines could have been greatly reduced if our government in the 60s and 70s had taken a more pacifistic approach rather than chase communism through the jungle for almost two decades. 

This study discusses how even when the war ends, for soldiers, the battle continues. The men and women who come back from overseas have an extremely difficult time “readjusting” or re assimilating back into their original lives. O’Brien highlights the guilt these men carry through the aimless destruction they cause when he writes: "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). Day after day, these men and women marched through swamps and fields of mud, killing anyone that not wearing a U.S. uniform. No one wins or loses in this situation because there isn’t a point of conflict. The natives in the villages probably knew less about the war than anyone, and they suffered significantly. The guilt that comes with knowledge that you are responsible for the deaths of innocent people is crippling, even long after the war has ended. 

More interesting though, is the way that these soldiers cope and find peace within the jungles of Vietnam. their environment In O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, the men use items, people, and ideas around them to transcend both the elements and ambushes that they are subject to incessantly. such a harsh reality. Towards the end of the novel, O’Brien writes: “But this too is true: stories can save us” (143). What he is explaining to the reader here, is that in war when all else fails and you lie awake for nights on end, you can escape through stories. The sharing of lighthearted stories of the way things and people used to be falls under the category of

“social support” (7)  that Price claims is key to coping with PTSD. Stories and the bonds we build with others are what lift us out of the pit of despair that is mental illness. 

The muggy, densely populated jungle environment in which these soldiers are stationed in is not the sole root of all the pain and suffering. Society’s expectations of the “ideal soldier” have also proven to be extremely detrimental to one’s well being. An article written by the U.S. National Library of Medicine on war and military mental health states that soldiers who “...recovered from an episode of mental breakdown during combat would suffer no adverse long-term consequences” (National Institute of Health). This article highlights everything wrong with the way we the Government tends to those who put their lives in jeopardy for our freedom. It is false rather absurd to assume that if someone recovers from one traumatic event that they will wipe it from their memory and are somehow immune to any other event that may occur in the future. The danger of this “ideal soldier” is young men and women not receiving the proper medical attention they need. According to the readjustment study, of the men with the most psychological suffering, “only a small number of these Veterans actually sought treatment from a mental health provider” (2). By creating this ideal military robot, society has prevented many from leading normal lives post-conflict.  Not all soldiers possess this eternal bravery quality that everyone expects. In O’Brien’s story, the men seem very insecure of themselves in relation to those around them. O’Brien highlights this large discrepancy between how society sees bravery and, “How he had been braver than he ever thought possible, but how he had not been so brave as he wanted to be” (78). No matter how much bravery Bowker (O’Brien’s friend) demonstrated, in his eyes, it still was not enough. According to O’Brien, this is something that cannot be explained to a regular citizen, it is just understood by those who have experienced war. The societal expectation that soldiers are emotionally invincible is illogical at this point. This issue mostly stems from the fact that society has such high expectations Our expectations for the mental and physical condition of our military is to the point where we deem them inhuman, able to shut their brains off, fight off emotions, and still expect them complete the task at hand. 

Not only does society assume that one can survive war by simply being “tough”, but that if one develops a mental illness later on in life, the Vietnam War is not to blame.  The article from the National Institute of Health discusses how same article also discusses how “Psychiatric disability commencing after the war was believed to be related to preexisting conditions” (National Institute of Health). It is very easy to make the “preexisting condition” claim being when you are someone who has not been in the Vietnam War. We have learned from O’Brien’s perspective on war first hand accounts that this is entirely false. When he tells the reader: “If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie” (68), he explains to us how the stories and pictures you see from war are what people want you to see, not what you need to see. Behind every story of valor and glory, there are a myriad of other stories which people neglect to both share and hear. In O’Brien’s eyes, until you realize this, you are part of the problem.  O’Brien would probably agree that war is entirely a negative experience no one should ever have to experience.

Through both research and The Things They Carried, it has become apparent to me that I truly did not understand anything about not just the Vietnam War, but war in general. Social media and news coverage does little justice for those scrapping day after day to stay alive on the front lines. Through O’Brien’s skillful storytelling and the subsequent mental conditions associated with war, I have found that there is no nobility in invading foreign territory, uprooting innocent people from their homes, and killing those who you believe to be “the enemy”. The Vietnam War seems to have been an unnecessary conflict considering the number of casualties and distraught U.S. citizens as a result. In order to ensure the wellbeing of our world and all of its inhabitants for the future, humanity must be our race, and love our religion. 
