Mental Trauma In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

In the book The Things They Carried, people experienced serious mental trauma. Not only did some, if not all, of them come back home with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, but they also came back to a nation full of hate and uneasiness towards the veterans. These veterans came back home riddled with guilt and visions flashing before their eyes every time they closed them, people’s worst nightmares put into real life, and yet these veterans are dishonorably discharged, with statements saying that they must not have been good enough for the war. Tim O’Brien, the author of this book, decided to tell us all of the war stories he will never be able to forget, in order to help us picture the unimaginable horrors that all of these veterans went through.

Jimmy Cross felt, even during war. She was his hope, his love, the normality of home. Martha was safe in his mind, where no one could hurt her, where the war couldn’t affect her. Lt. Cross took pictures of her with him into war, as well as a necklace and the letters she would send him. Martha was always on his mind, and she was always at home, waiting for him. One day, they are sent into the tunnels, and Cross imagines Martha as well as himself being crushed under the heavy weight of soil and mud. Ted Lavender is shot in this time, and then Cross realized that this is death, not home, and love has so place in the jungles and crossfire of a war in Vietnam. Not only is Martha an example of love, but she’s an example of home, of bliss and many other things that the men cannot have while in

After an older man is found dead in a razed village, O’Brien is asked to join in making fun of this deceased man. He thinks back to Linda, whom he had taken on a date in the fourth grade, and consequently fallen in love with. She fell from life because of a brain tumor, yet O’Brien kept her alive with the fantasies and stories he made up in his head, using her as the love of his life. With these backstories and explanations, one can conclude that through stories, the dead will live, such as O’Brien stated in the book.

Kathleen shown the true innocence of the life and world back home. When she is nine years old, she asks her father, Tim O’Brien, if he had ever killed someone, assuming that he writes all of these war stories because he had killed someone during the war. This creates the atmosphere for “The Man I Killed” to be told, but in a first person, no detail left out. Kathleen represents the small, childlike naivety and innocence of America and it’s people during the Vietnam