“The Things They Carried” shows the mental terrors that occurred to most combatants during or in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. It lays out many circumstances and cinereous that haunted soldiers for generations and even today. As these men and women were coming home they weren’t greeted with the enthusiasm that society sees today. Instead they were cast aside, even if all these soldiers were doing was following orders. The public opinion of the Vietnam war made it very difficult for veterans to get the proper treatment they needed. Tim O’Brien describes a young lieutenant named Jimmy Cross who only wants a woman named Martha to love him the way he loves her. This is just one example of the intense insomnia that is laid out in the excerpt. Written in 1990, this was just as the public, as a whole, was finally beginning to except the Vietnam veterans for the excruciating pain they still suffer today from the guerilla warfare tactics that were used. By having the understanding of PTSD that we have today, we see why so many veterans, such as Jimmy Cross in the narrative, turned to insomnia just to cope with the pain.   

The Vietnam war is a dark spot on American history. Today, veterans of any war are celebrated as heroes to their country, as they truly deserve. However, during the Vietnam time period protests of the war were going on around the country, so anyone who came home from the war was seen as a bad person. This time period isn’t talked about much by Americans now because of how poorly they were treated. Some people became homeless as soon as getting back from the war. Little did society know the troubles that these men and women were actually going through in their minds during this stressful time. While doctors knew more about PTSD and other problems facing returning soldiers than in earlier wars they still didn’t know near enough to have any measurable help to the victims. Therefore, not only did these veterans have to deal with their own demons inside their minds, they had to do it all alone while being shut out from society. Imaging going through severe depression and no one being there for you. That was an everyday thing for these soldiers, who once again were just following orders.

 This also occurred around the time when protesting was starting to become a popular form of expressing displeasure towards the government. The new generation saw protesting as the most effective way to voice their opinions. It would’ve never happened during world war one or even world war two. The parents of this “protesting generation” would have never been caught dead protesting the government’s decisions in this way. It most likely would have been taken as disrespect and definitely wouldn’t be the social norm. This shows the cultural shift that America was going through during the Vietnam war and unfortunately some veterans were left untreated or mistreated for the horrors they endured overseas. Americans might regret it now but it was becoming a cultural norm for veterans to be shunned and this had to be stopped as quickly as possible.

In Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” he goes into extreme detail as to what each member of the unit is carrying with them. Now was this just an OCD thing that the author remembered about every member in his platoon or does it have deeper meaning? Of course, it has deeper meaning, each person is carrying different items and these items represent the different demons that each individual soldier is fighting. This is O’Brien’s way of expressing all the untreated demons’ soldiers along with himself returned to America with. Having to deal with all these horrific things alone in one’s head is most likely why diseases such as PTSD even exist in the first place. These when were so lonely that it was said that almost all of them humped just pictures of girls from back home that they knew. This goes to show how lonely the battlefield can be in certain time periods. Jimmy Cross showing his love for Martha even if she didn’t feel the same at all showed the most important factor to soldiers during any war, getting home to see loved ones again. In today’s army, it is a lot more likely for loved ones to return from war but during these times it almost became rare to find someone who hadn’t been affected by a loss of some kind due to the Vietnam war. 

One main factor that O’Brien considers in this narrative are the effects of hysteria. These soldiers were used to an American or European landscape where no one party has too much of an advantage and they were thrown into the jungles of Vietnam. In these jungles, unthinkable things happened to people, some of what hasn’t even been fully documented today. People saw their theoretical brothers get blow up right before their own eyes. Having people worry about them turning to alcohol or drugs back home was the least of their worries. Especially if all the world wanted to do was shut them out and not offer the actual help that they desperately needed. Most veterans are good people who just need a stress reliever and since the world shuts them out they turn to other means to cope. It wouldn’t be until many years later that doctors would finally get these men and women the treatment that they dissevered and in many cases, that was too late to help these poor people who should’ve been given much more. In some cases veterans dealing with hysteria have been run completely out of their families lives. Some situations are really hard to deal with but a veteran who is dealing with a problem as serious as hysteria should be given all the chances in the world. 

Another factor in “The Things They Carried” and probably the most important overall theme throughout the excerpt was the PTSD that almost all surviving Vietnam veterans face daily. One little thing could go wrong and it could set off a chain reaction leading to vivid flashbacks to unthinkable memories. Normal citizens can’t even imagine what it would be like to experience something like that, but when it happens to veterans, especially from Vietnam, society shuns them and makes them feel like an outcast. A cure for PTSD hasn’t really been found at this time, of course there is depression medicine and other kinds of medicine made to help assist the victims of PTSD in their everyday lives. While these medicines assist victims, they do not cure the disease. Doctors don’t even necessarily know if it’s actually a disease or just something the brain goes through after it endures too much stress. Some people claim to have PTSD from things other than war so that goes to back up the theory that it happens when the brain undergoes extreme stress. To think that one could just be so stressed that they need strong medicine to help them get through the day without hurting people is scary. PTSD is one of the major problems in America today. One of Americas main concerns should be to help its veterans no matter what war they fought in and no matter if any generation thinks about it. 

Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” shows a correlation between the Vietnam war and the way veterans were treated in that time period and the way they are treated today. While the wounds were, fresh people had a hard time excepting the veterans as just people who were doing their job and throwing their political opinions into the mix before thinking about the wellbeing of others. If society as a whole would think of other lives instead of being selfish and only thinking of themselves the world would be a better place and American probably wouldn’t have the problems that it has today trying to take care of its veterans. O’Brien wants the reader to take account as to what the reader is carrying in their everyday lives. Everyone has their baggage that they carry around and everyone’s baggage is going to be a little different because every life goes through different circumstances. It is stressed that in the narrative that every life has its own problems and they are all important.   
