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Examples Of Trauma In The Things They Carried

689 Words3 Pages

Shamus Colson
Ms. Robinson
Junior Humanities English
13 June 2023

Vietnam and the trauma carried by a soldier from a war fought in vane
Throughout Tim O'brien's book The Things They Carried we are introduced to several young men who had been deployed to the Vietnam countryside to fight a war where there was no clear good guy or bad guy and no real objective other than to kill the spread of Communism. Unfortunately rather than addressing the horrible things these young men saw and experienced our government and some of our people shunned away these young men and the trauma they carry from a war fought in vane, where instead of valuing the lives and emotional well-being of America's sons, our government valued money and capitalism.
The young man that arguably carries the most trauma throughout the book is Norman Bowker. Bowker’s most eye-opening and heartbreaking experience during Vietnam takes place at the platoon encampment that unknowingly was placed at the edge of a sewage field. One night it begins to rain particularly hard causing the edge of the sewage pit to turn to mud, then unexpectedly Viet Cong mortar rounds take fire on the already eroding campsite causing a fellow soldier by the name of Kiowa to fall into the sewage pit and begin to drown in human …show more content…

Though Tim Obrien never confirms the stories he shares in The Things They Carried are true he does share some very insightful anecdotes about the trauma he carried with him from Vietnam. One particular quote that highlights this is “A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth”.(53) This quote means that Tim Obrien feels that to him the depravity and trauma he experienced in Vietnam is beyond difficult to fathom and little more than a lie and that he can recollect on the perhaps fictional but very similar trauma his characters carry with

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