Judith Herman, a psychiatrist researcher focused on traumatic stress, once said, “The conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of psychological trauma” (Herman). In Judith Herman’s quote, she says that its hard for soldiers to proclaim or talk about the horrors they had seen while they were at war. This is an important aspect of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) because the ex-soldiers would rather push the memory to the back of their brain than talk about it and relieve it. This disease has been prevalent after every war, but it just had a different name. For example, after World War I it was called shell shock, and after World War II it was called battle fatigue. Only after the Vietnam War did doctors start referring to it as PTSD. Although soldiers are persistent about forgetting the war, writing about the events that transpired helps the soldiers forget and move passed their depression.

PTSD is a disease that is different for every soldier, yet they are extremely similar. Soldiers typically experience PTSD after being in high “war-zone” areas, where they are out on patrols, shooting at enemies, and experiencing the full forces of war. Accordingly, in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, he tells of his experiences fighting in the Vietnam War: “Serious spooky. You just go with the vapors—the fog sort of takes you in....And the sounds, man. The sounds carry forever. You hear shit nobody should ever hear.” (O’Brien 3). O’Brien is saying that while in war the soldier sees, hears, and feels things that are so insane that its hard to believe. Soldiers who have proven to have PTSD repeatedly show signs of not mentally returning from war. It is as if their mind is still out on the battle field fighting the war in their head. Similarly, natural disasters are traumatic events, yet people do not typically get PTSD from hurricanes or earthquakes. PTSD typically comes from traumatic events that would go against an individual’s morals, for example seeing a child shot in front of his or her parents. Soldiers would experience these types of situations regularly, so it is highly likely many soldiers returned from war with PTSD. O’Brien was able to give his perspective of the war, which allows the reader to get a taste of the atrocities that happened. He writes about the war so people are educated about the horrors of war and the lasting effects it has on people.

There are aspects of the war that appear to not bother soldiers, but in reality it effects them in a different way. There were weapons often used that would cause so much destruction that they are now banned from use in war. These weapons exposed soldiers to things that were unimaginably horrific. O’Brien says, “War is hell, but that’s not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead” (O’Brien 7). O’Brien describes all the things that happen in war, and this quote shows the reader that its not always bad, but the bad parts are what the soldiers remember most. This quote ties into O’Brien’s theme of telling a true war story. O’Brien tells the same story about Curt Lemon dying, but each way he tells it it delivers a different message. He told the same story in a way that it was a love story between two friends that were separated by death. For example, O’Brien writes, “Then he took a peculiar half step, moving from shade into bright sunlight, and the booby-trapped 105 round blew him into a tree. The parts were just hanging there…” (O’Brien 8). He told it in a way where it made war appear as hell because he had to scrape the body parts of Lemon off of the trees and surrounding brush. This story had a lasting impact on Tim O’Brien because he wrote about it several different ways. He wrote this because he lost one of his friends in war and in order for him to push passed the travesty, he had to write about it. Writing is a medium for expressing emotions; therefore, O’Brien was able to let out emotions he had bottled up inside him. This release of emotions would help him get passed his PTSD. 

The truth in a war story helps point to the mental state of the author. O’Brien says a true war story has a surreal feeling, that makes it seem untrue, but that feeling is what shows the truth in the story. The truth in the war stories told relate to the experiences that happened in war. Accordingly, he discusses war stories never being finished because there are always incidents left out. This can be interpreted that the story never ends in the soldier’s head because they are constantly reliving the traumatic events that they experienced. Since the story is never finished in the minds of the author, it would never be finished when they write it in a book. Similarly, the soldier’s PTSD causes them to re-tell the story in a different way giving them a different message to believe. Accordingly, O’Brien states, “Often in a true war story there is not even a point, or else the point doesn’t hit you until twenty years later, in your sleep, and you wake up and shake your wife and start telling the story to her, except when you get to the end you’ve forgotten the point again” (O’Brien 8). This is important because it shows the O’Brien had been affected by the things he saw while at war that it caused him to have nightmares about it. Each memory of the story is perceived in a different way. The message of the story is important because each time it’s told it reflects on what the narrator is feeling when writing it. Writing is part of the reading-writing-thinking cycle where people convey their feelings through multiple forms of communication. O’Brien utilizes this cycle to his experiences in Vietnam; moreover, the writing aspect allows him calm his mind while creating a story from his terrible experiences. It allows him to organize his thoughts about and from the war where he is able to form an opinion about the events that transpired.

PTSD continually effected soldiers long after the war had been resolved. Leslie Roberts wrote in 1988, “A new study, funded by the Veterans Administration (VA), has found that 470,000 Vietnam veterans still suffer from a major psychological disorder directly related to the war” (Roberts 1). Roberts is saying that ten years after the war had finished 470,000 people have a major case of PTSD. This is important because it means that the events that transpired in Vietnam were so traumatic to a majority of the soldier that it created psychological problems in many people. Many of the soldiers in Vietnam carried journals where they wrote about the things they did. Donald Ringnalda, a scholar in Vietnam era literature, once stated, “And as many writers have said, you didn't learn anything from the Vietnam experience; you either survived or you didn't; poof - there goes the machinery of the novel of initiation” (Ringnalda 37). The war caused many people to lose their hope in the world, so they had become closed minded where there is a closure of imagination, and a narrowness in theme’s of stories. Writing gives the veterans a chance to use their brains to make up a story and meaning to the events they lived in Vietnam. This would foster a change in the heads of the veterans with PTSD because they are using their imagination and memories to write a story that tries to make sense of what happened to them. This forces the soldiers to embrace what happened, once they do this, it helps them move passed their PTSD.

The Vietnam War was so mentally traumatic to many of the soldiers who fought in it, that many of them had received treatment for PTSD. There were books, such as Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, and studies conducted that show the horrors of the Vietnam War, and how it effected the soldiers lives after the war. Similarly, Judith Herman wrote that denial of the traumatic events that occurred, is what starts PTSD from happening to people. This ties into O’Brien’s message of a true war stories are never finished, have no moral meaning, and the truth is found in the chaos of the stories. Where writing is a medium for soldiers to feel better about their experiences while at war. The stories help to prove that the data is correct about the number of people who have PTSD. 
