




During The Things They Carried the soldiers carried both physical and mental burdens. The different objects and memories that each soldier carried can open a door to what was going on during the Vietnam War and how it had an affect on those involved in it. Many soldiers suffered life long mental illnesses such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Many soldiers also endured physical injuries such as amputations and diseases as well as death. Drugs were also widely used during the Vietnam War, which is thought to be as a result of PTSD and the stress bearing down on the soldiers. The soldiers did drugs to find a way to relax and let loose even when being shot at in the worst or the worst jungles. 

During the article “PTSD and Vietnam Veterans” Eric Vermetten tells about the numbers and the affects of PTSD on veterans. Vermetten states that the soldiers affected by PTSD are a serious underestimate. Some one in five veterans from the Vietnam War ended up with PTSD. This means that within a group of five friends sitting around and laughing, one of them was going to end up with a serious mental disorder that would haunt them for the rest of their life. Vermetten states in his article that around 236,000 veterans still have posttraumatic stress disorder from the Vietnam War. Further studies since the Vietnam War have helped us effectively treat PTSD and try to make a soldiers life somewhat normal again. As seen by the previous statistic however, these methods are most definitely not 100 percent effective. Vermetten also says that certain extremely conservative criteria has to be met for the Department of Veteran’s Affairs (VA) to even consider a diagnosis of PTSD. Vermetten says in his article that he thinks that the VA should completely do away with funding and programs for PTSD and focus more on the programs that have more to do with rehab rather than coping with disabilities. 

This coincides with The Things They Carried because Tim O’Brien talks about the effects of PTSD throughout the text. He talks about the mental burdens that the soldiers carried day in and day out and he talked about the horrors they saw. A common theme when diagnosing PTSD is death and witnessing death. This can be seen in effect throughout both texts. Soldier had to find ways to let loose and relax after going through these traumas, which led them to turn to drugs and alcohol to release their stressful feelings. Not only is it the physical weight bearing down on the soldier, but it is also the psychological weight that the soldiers have to endure that cannot be relieved. When a soldier comes home from the war they are no longer in physical pain and stress due to the objects they were carrying in Vietnam. They are however, faced with the memories from the war every day and this is where PTSD comes into play. If PTSD is broken down into its four parts the fist is post which means after the war. The second part to PTSD is traumatic which encases what the soldiers were put through during the war. The third part, stress, explains the effects of the war on the mind and body and the last part of PTSD is disorder, showing that this is not normal and that it is some sort of abnormality. Many soldiers that went through the Vietnam way, including my grandfather, don’t like to talk about any aspects if the war. The only time I have even seen my grandfather begin to shed a tear was when he found the names of his long lost friends on the Vietnam memorial. I am sure that when you are in a horrible place like the jungles of Vietnam, you really begin to connect with your comrades around you as they become your family because you are not sure if you will even make it through the night, much less make it home at the end of your tour. This also coincides with the reason that you shouldn’t ever ask anyone of duty if they have ever shot or killed anyone. Even if this is a heroic accomplishment in the eyes of some people, many of the soldiers don’t want to relive the moment that they had to take another man’s life. For all the soldier knows, that man had a family he was looking to go home to much as they were and he never made it back. As they think about it later, they made the right decision in that time and place, but who would want to think about killing another human being.

The next topic of drugs can be tied into PTSD. Drugs were often used as a stress reliever during the Vietnam War. With everything that the soldiers were going through, they often needed a way to relax and forget all of the pain they were going through. Soldiers turned to drugs such as marijuana and heroine. The Vietnam veterans were, generally speaking, the first druggies. Many of the soldiers would light one up to relax and let loose of getting shot at, for example, and many of the other bad memories that tagged along with the war. Can you imagine looking death in the face everyday as if you were going through a living hell? Well, a living hell is what these soldiers endured through every day. So by nature they wanted to release their feeling s that they had cooped up. The soldiers then brought back their drug habits and techniques to the States after the War giving rise to the drug usage of the sixties. In “The Sixties: The Decade Remembered Now, by the People Who Lived It Then”, Richard Polenburg explains that the sixties and all the music, drugs, and war that came with it ties deeply into PTSD. The drugs, hippies and music culture made this time period very different and much different than any time period leading up to it. 

“The Sixties: The Decade Remembered Now, by the People Who Lived It Then” backs up The Things They Carried by explaining much of the drug usage of the Vietnam War. In one section of The Things They Carried a soldier was killed and hi comrades dragged him out of the line of fire and stole the drugs off of his dead body and immediately began to use them. The guys body was not even cold yet, but the soldiers were so dead inside that death had because just another normality of war. The drugs were a staple to put the death and suffering behind them. As a result of the drugs, many of the scenes and thoughts in The Things They Carried could have been hallucinations due to the use of drugs and alcohol. The use of drugs has changed today from what the veterans intended them for and has moved more to recreational use rather than a substance that is used to relieve pain and stress. O’Brien also utilizes a fine line in the text between fiction and reality. The drug usage can cause a blur between what was really going on in the war and what was a made up fantasy even though O’Brien was a veteran of the Vietnam War himself. 

These articles given during the essay help to back the cultural significance of the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War was a hard time fore American and individuals in general. Many citizens of America still feel the effects of the war still today through PTSD and the drugs that were used to stow away the pain throughout the war. These are lifelong effects that will not go away and will only die with the victim.

 



