
The Vietnam War was one for the books. Not only was it a war that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of soldiers, but it also was a war that was widely disapproved of. War itself is very difficult for everyone, especially the soldiers fighting in it. Soldiers will see things that are unimaginable to us here at home. Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” details the physical things a soldier will carry with him during his time in Vietnam. It seems like it is just basic things, but it also represents everything that has happened to them while fighting. “The Things They Carried” uses the list of the things the soldiers literally carried to show that they were a metaphor for the emotional burdens the soldiers carried with them in order to argue that these physical and emotional burdens put onto the soldiers would have a life-long effect on their lives.

In this story, introduced are the members of Lieutenant Jimmy Cross’s platoon and the things they carry with them. It starts out with basic things, and they are not necessarily military related. Each was specific to each member of the platoon, like Cross with his letter from Martha, Dobbins with his extra food, Jensen with his hygiene products, and Lavender with things to calm himself (O’Brien 331). Then the story continues with a lot more detailed list of things the soldiers carried with them emotionally, more about how Cross feels about Martha, and then a hint of Lavender’s death. The narrator then tells us how Lavender died, “shot in the head on his way back from peeing” (O’Brien 334). After this is revealed the story is extremely negative and Lavender’s death stays with all the members of the platoon. The narrator also stops using lists. He can talk more freely about the situations that these men were faced with and “emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love,” (O’Brien 338). The narrator gets more and more deep about all the things the men were feeling and it paints the picture of the real hell that not only these men but also every other soldier went through in Vietnam.

There are men and women who go to fight for our nation today, and many will come back with some type of physical or emotional injury. It is something that shows the world and everyone they meet that they have been in war and they have seen horrifying things that change a person forever. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, is a very common disorder soldiers face when they return from war. Today we are lucky that there is thorough research that has been done, so that our veterans can get the proper help they need. However, back during the Vietnam War era, this kind of research had not yet been done. Back then, most thought the disorder was just due to the combat exposure soldiers had been exposed to, and that is a large part of the cause. It was the insecurity of not knowing when someone would strike and what would happen to the soldiers. It was also the journey of being in a strange and foreign place and going through and wreaking havoc on this place and watching it all happen. It was not being respected by the Vietnamese that the American soldiers were there initially to help. It was the possibility of becoming a prisoner of war. 

In the 80s, some of the beginning research was being done on PTSD and what affects its cause. One study found that “social characteristics such as race, contextual factors such as social support, and subsequent psychological and behavioral problems” (Laufer 82) also play a key role in PTSD in a soldier, not just combat. This was a breakthrough into what was causing veterans from Vietnam so many problems. It was also the call to action to fix the way PTSD is measured, declaring that, “the importance of developing a well-specified model of war stress in order to determine its casual effects on life-course outcomes” (Laufer 82) was needed now more than ever. All this together helped to paint the beginning picture of how complex a disease PTSD is and the effects it can have on people’s lives.

One extremely important factor to put into the mix is the large amount of disapproval for the Vietnam War. The origin of being in Vietnam was to stop the spread of communism. However, from almost the beginning of the war there was Congressional disapproval, but also “newspapers carry long lists of lawyers, teachers, clergymen, writers, and students opposed to the war” (Guttmann 57). It was a subject that consumed the nation and divided it all the same. People at home became more obsessed with how wrong it was to be there than what the goal of being there was. There were riots and each had their own reasons for why we should not be there. But amidst all this protest and hate, there were still soldiers out there fighting for the nation. These soldiers, whether they agreed or disagreed with the reasons for them being there, were still doing their duty to America and fighting. Unlike the last major war America was involved in, WWII, those soldiers came back from combat honored heroes and when they were fighting there was no question of their reasons for being there. These WWII veteran’s children grew up with parents who would reminisce on the glory of being a war hero and these same kids would be the men that would fight in Vietnam. They went expecting to be just like their parents but instead they came back to nothing of the sorts. They came back to not be the heroes their fathers were but the symbols of a war many despised. This horror of itself is something to add to the PTSD a soldier feels upon return.

“The Things They Carried” shows the journey Cross’s platoon goes through on their time in Vietnam. At the beginning the story being organized in lists adds structure to a story that is difficult to tell, the story of how one of Cross’s men, Lavender, is killed. As the narrator continues to hint at Lavender’s death more and more, he gets more descriptive and once the narrator says how Lavender died, the story becomes much more raw. He begins to show the effect the war has had on all the men. The narrator details how much the soldiers carried, “shameful memories…common secrets of cowardice…the instinct to run” (O’Brien 338) and how the most important thing any of them could do was, “maintaining the masks of composure” (O’Brien 339). The men would dream of freedom, of getting out just to escape the things they carried. They thought that if they got out then all their problems would leave them. But that is just it. The way they would feel, all the things they have carried with them, like the stress from the death of their friend, would stay with them even after they left. When they returned home they would also feel the extreme disapproval people had towards the war. They would think that their friend had died for nothing based on how people felt about the war. All this together would spiral out of control to become a disease, PTSD, that would have an effect on the rest of their lives.

O’Brien’s story portrays the pain and suffering a soldier in Vietnam went through, and as a Vietnam veteran himself, he has an amazing insight into what things were really like there. Many came back broken people and experienced PTSD from their own unique situations and coming back to a nation that so openly hated the Vietnam War is enough to damage anyone. From the details expressed in the story, coupled with research, the soldier’s experience in Vietnam is something so different from a soldier’s from a different war. As with every war comes a different soldier experience, but the Vietnam soldier is one who is stuck in a painful time. He goes day to day masking how he feels, and keeping everything that happens inside as to not show weakness. He hopes to find peace by coming back to his home but is instead met by the opposite of peace and that is what sticks with him for the rest of his life.
