The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien - 1737 Words

Afterlife of War Tim O’Brien’s â€Å"The Things They Carried† is based on what soldiers went through facing war, and what they carried physically as well as emotionally. All of this pressure from war can cause and has caused post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the soldiers. â€Å"PTSD is the development of a set of symptoms in the aftermath of psychologically distressing event—an event â€Å"outside the range of normal human experience.†Ã¢â‚¬  (Roberts 3). PTSD is a disorder that can happen to anyone, but many see it diagnosed in war veterans, from the effects of war. This disorder can ranges from outburst to solitude and can affect each person in a different way. Some symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder are re-experiencing or flashbacks,†¦show more content†¦(O’Brien 1519). The symptoms vary with each soldier depending on how the soldier faced and took in the war. Though the symptoms are: re-experiencing, such as reliving, hallu cinations, flashbacks, or feeling/acting as though the trauma is happening again. (Finely 11) This can cause major disorientation in the soldier, which causes pain to the veteran and family who they associate with. Avoidance/Numbing is also a symptom, this symptom affects feelings, although it may be hard to explain, it is the attempt to avoid thoughts, feelings or discussions of the trauma (Finely 11); for soldiers in war it may be the war in all. The Soldiers in â€Å"The Things They Carried† (Lieutenant Cross) kept to himself about how he felt when his man was shot, he felt he was supposed to protect him and so he avoided the others and his feelings about that situation (O’Brien 1525). Hyperarousal is something simple but something that soldiers have an intensified amount of. The trouble of falling or staying asleep, may be because they don’t want dreams of what they have gone through, the exaggerated startle response is because how they trained to survive the war (Finley 11), a simple wake up may put them in fight for life mode. Soldiers face difficult times in the war, and they don’t realize the harm that happened to them from the war. Wars are a difficult place to be. â€Å"THE VIETNAM WAR transformed a generation† (Roberts 1). With all that happened during the war such as exposure to