Stress Disorder In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and How it Affects Certain Vietnam Veterans

Imagine the worst song you can think of, stuck in your head. You try to think of a different song, one that you like, but that awful song just keeps playing over and over and over, in your mind. Now imagine that song as your most horrific memories, and it never stops. This is how Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder makes most people feel. The author of The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien, is one of the men who was with the other soldiers, meaning that he experienced the events in the story first-hand. He himself also suffers from PTSD, and has chapters about his thoughts, feelings, and family intervention when he was writing his memoir.
"Speaking of Courage,” tells
As a way of marking time, Norman Bowker repeatedly drives a loop around the local lake remembering old girlfriends, hoping one day to track down high-school buddies who have moved to Des Moines or Sioux, and how he would explain Kiowa’s death in the field. When Bowker was in “high school, at night, he had driven around and around it with Sally Krammer…or other times with friends, talking about urgent matters… Then, there had not been war”(O’Brien 132). Bowker came home to find that Sally was married, his friends were gone, and his father was at home watching TV. He made it seem like it wasn’t a problem, but that was when he went “he took [his dad’s] Chevy on another seven-mile turn around the lake (O’Brien 133). According to John H. Timmerman, author of Twentieth Century Literature, Norman Bowkers’ “aimless circling works then to demonstrate his inability to settle back into the routine of the world and exemplifies the psychological distance between his former and present selves” (108). O’Brien shows Bowker’s relapse by circling the lake before and after the war, as the relapse is encapsulated by his trip around the lake back in high school with Sally and doing it again after the war, with out her this time. Bowker
Norman Bowker and Rat Kiley are two characters that suffer from PTSD. Bowker experiences relapse and suicidal thoughts as his symptoms; where as, Kiley suffers from angry outburst. O’Brien is a credible source for authenticating what defines a true story due to the fact he was part of the Vietnam war and he also suffers from PTSD. From the research gathered about PTSD symptoms, it is clear over the struggles that some go through dealing with this disorder. PTSD is a ‘fracture’ in your experience of life, caused by a traumatic event. You and no one else cause this fracture in your mind because it is response for attempting to cope with what happened. But unfortunately, it’s an ill-informed response. So the next time a song is on repeat in your mind, just imagine it’s a repeat of your most horrific memories.

Work Cited

Naparsteck, Martin. “An Interview with Tim O 'Brien”. Contemporary Literature 32.1 (Spring 1991); 1-11. JSTOR. Web. April 6, 2012.

O’Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. Boston: Mariner, 2009. Print.

Orth, Ulrich, and Elias Wieland. "Anger, Hostility, And Posttraumatic Stress Disorder In Trauma-Exposed Adults: A Meta-Analysis." Journal Of Consulting And Clinical Psychology 74.4 (2006): 698-706. PsycARTICLES.