Tim OBriens, the Things They Carried Critical Essay on Ptsd

Dan Gaumer Gaumer 1 Prof Montgomery English 104 10/22/12 Hard Times of Norman Bowker Have you ever found yourself carrying something heavy for a long period of time? Do you remember feeling pain, or wanting to drop the object because it was too much to bear? Tim O’brien’s novel, The Things They Carried, is about men in the middle of the Vietnam War just trying to survive. These men, like all soldiers, carried many things ranging from the physical items of war to the emotional and mental weight that comes along with the horrors of war. â€Å"They carried all they could bear, and then some, including a silent awe for the terrible power of the things they†¦show more content†¦Already physically and emotionally defeated, they can’t seem to pick up their lives where they left off. Even in instances of supportive partners, the inevitable horrors of the war haunt them in sleep or come back to them in daydreaming. They all came back with multiple disorders, PTSD with the common symptoms. The war was over and there was no place in particular to go (131). Various examples of this disorder are found in a few chapters such as Speaking of Courage and The Man I Killed. For Vietnam veterans, nothing could replenish the zest for life they had before the war. According to OBriens text, upon their arrival home the veterans imagine, even hallucinate, what things would have been like if they had not suffered through the war. Examples of such occurrences exist in the stories Speaking of Courage and The Man I Killed. Norman Bowker in Speaking of Courage daydreams of talking to his ex-girlfriend, now married to another guy, and of his dead childhood friend, Max Arnold. He lives out over and over his unfulfilled dream of having his Sally beside him and of having manly conversations with Max. He cannot stop day dreaming and dwelling in the past. Gaumer 3 Unemployed and overwhelmed by inferiority and disappointment, Bowker lacks a motivating force for life. Emotionally stricken, he only finds satisfaction in driving slowly and repeatedly inShow MoreRelatedThe Things They Carried By Tim O Brien2000 Words   |  8 Pageschange for the American soldier, but also for the American citizens back home, fearing what could happen to their families and their country. In the novel, The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien, a Vietnam war veteran himself, tells stories through a soldier’s eyes to describe the Vietnam war and to prove how war changes people. O’Brien’s stories in this novel are directly inspired by his real-life experiences in the Vietnam war. These stories go step by step telling the story of becoming and being