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Introduction
The collection of short stories by American writer Tim O’Brien “The Things They Carried,” published in 1990, is a holistic narrative about the Vietnam War and its participants. The book combines the horrible depiction of war with reflections on the impact the war has. Written in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, the work conveys the brutality and bloodthirstiness of military actions as well as the mental state of soldiers. The book, portraying the grave consequences of the war and its huge imprint on people’s minds, serves to show the psychological aspects of military actions and states that wars are conducive to the development of post-traumatic stress disorder in people actively engaged in them.
Horrors of War and Their Impact on the Psyche
Being an active participant in the Vietnam War, O’Brien vividly portrays military actions from the perspective of young men who find themselves in the center of war, unable to question the “heroic ideals” of the army service. In the collection’s title story, apart from the things soldiers carry, the author portrays the feelings and memories they take with them through Vietnam. Thus, O’Brien writes: “They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing − these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight” (3). This endless list depicts the unbearable emotional and psychological burden of their situation, exacerbated by adverse weather conditions when soldiers have to make their way to the area through swamp mud and rice fields waist-deep in water. O’Brien vividly portrays the soldiers’ difficulties to show why post-traumatic stress disorder is formed. Moreover, the author makes his characters engage in actions hardly compatible with general human values such as compassion and mercy but which align with the orders of the army commandment.
Indeed, the stories are based on real events, and the evidence of the brutality and dehumanization of war efforts in Vietnam can be found in the descriptions of military actions by those people who took part in them. Relying on the evidence from the National Vietnam War Longitudinal Study, Dohrenwend et al. describe the prevailing attitudes in the army and vividly depict the atmosphere that reigned in it. Thus, they state the Vietnamese were hardly seen as human by the US military commandment, and soldiers were encouraged to call them different names such as “dinks, gooks, slopes, slants” and others (Dohrenwend et al., 16). Moreover, “there was a striking contrast between the formal instruction to kill only military adversaries and the informal message (given loud and clear) to kill just about everyone” (Dohrenwend et al., 17). Such attitude resulted in many episodes of burning civilian villages and killing people, including women and children, who had nothing to do with military efforts. One such episode finds its portrayal in the story “Style,” where the readers see a girl dancing in the background of a burned village where all her family died.
The brutality and cruelty of war where no one was spared could not but tell on the soldiers’ psyche. Thus, in the story “Ghost Soldiers,” combatants begin to hallucinate and believe in the supernatural, while in other episodes, they cannot get rid of the feeling of guilt for their actions. In the story “The Man I Killed,” the readers see the author’s moral torments at what he did to kill a man (O’Brien). Indeed, in this tale, O’Brien is so focused on the feeling of guilt that his presence as a protagonist and narrator fades into the background. Confusion and a sense of hopelessness are reflected in the narrator’s fantasy. Thus, the author says, “He was not a fighter. His health was poor, his body small and frail. He liked books. He wanted someday to be a teacher of mathematics”, not able to get rid of the feeling that what he did was wrong (O’Brien, 87)
Dohrenwend et al. state that in war, soldiers are prone to experiencing harmful and destructive feelings unparallel to anything they feel in civilian life (150-165). Indeed, anger, despair, and rage soldiers experience often serve to cover the fear they feel deep inside. Many acts of aggression have terror as an underlying cause that pushes soldiers to commit them (Dohrenwend et al., 168-174). The readers see how this fear drives soldiers to commit reckless actions, kill and torture people and animals, and earn post-traumatic syndrome in its most severe and incurable form.
The author’s personal story is woven into the intricate fabric of madness, grotesque, and despair portrayed in the narrative. In the story “On the Rainy River,” O’Brien recalls how he tried to escape from the draft to Canada. In describing his feelings, he is mercilessly accurate. On the one hand, he is unwilling to take part in military actions and risk his life in the war, the aims of which he does not understand, and, on the other, he is ashamed not to fight for his country. The author compares his condition with schizophrenia: inside, two voices are saying that it’s scary to go to war and more terrifying still to flee to Canada, where he will have to forget about his family, friends, and old life forever (O’Brian, 37). This comparison is not accidental. Kang et al. state that apart from the horrors that the soldiers experience in war efforts, thinking about the justice and moral side of military actions and the soldiers’ own role in them may be conducive to the development of post-traumatic stress disorder (528-537). Thus, the moral choice the author faces is in itself suggestive of the experiences ahead.
After-War Life and the Development of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
It is widely known that people who lived through military experience may have difficulties adapting to everyday life. O’Brien vividly portrays this in the story “The Man I Killed,” describing his personal feelings. Even twenty years after the war finished, he can still recall the man in minute details and continues brooding over whether it was possible to avoid the killing. Boscarino et al. state that the inability to get rid of painful memories is often a part of post-traumatic stress disorder that manifests itself through obsessive thoughts and memories, repeated “experience” of the situation, panic attacks, and anxiety as well as outbursts of anger and aggression (757-765). Moreover, PTSD patients, unwittingly, constantly return to the traumatic episode in their thoughts, and see nightmares and stroboscopic flashbacks (Boscarino et al., 757-760). Sometimes these reactions are triggered by the outer environment, at least remotely resembling the circumstances of injury but such memory reactions can also occur spontaneously.
However, the ability of a person to overcome his or her traumatic experience largely depends on the post-deployment support he or she gets. (Boscarino et al., 757-760). Boscarino et al. have found that in cases where people get high support from family and friends, they are more likely to recover from post-traumatic stress disorder than in cases when there is no one to share their experience with. This observation is well portrayed in O’Brian’s story. The author makes it clear that his daughter’s support and understanding helped him to cope with the emotional impact the military actions he took part in made on his psyche.
However, not all people can overcome the traumatic experience they have lived through, and, in such cases, post-traumatic stress disorder may assume its most severe forms. The readers see a vivid example of it in the story “Speaking of Courage.”The main character of this story, Norman Bowker, returns to his hometown to find no one waiting for him: his father and best friend are dead, and his girlfriend has been married for a long time. The only joy he has is that he has met his late father’s expectations and brought seven medals from the war. However, awards cannot help Bowker cope with the post-traumatic stress disorder he experiences, and again and again, in his memories, he returns to the events of the Vietnam War.
Bowker remembers the death of his friend Kiowa during a mortar attack. Just as Norman keeps driving around the lake without realizing it, the thoughts in his head revolve around the themes of war and death. It is reasonable to assume that the lake around which he drives reflects in his memory the field where Kiowa drowned. The field, which resembled quicksand, in this context, is metaphorical, representing the image of death that took the lives of young soldiers. The comparison can be extended further to say that the lake, in turn, takes away Norman’s sanity and ability to adequately assess the current situation.
As Boscarino et al. state, “the prevalence of mental disorders among veterans would be higher among those who experienced negative homecoming experiences” (757). This idea finds its reflection in the story “Speaking of Courage,” where O’Brien describes the symptoms of a mental illness slowly setting in. The metaphor the author uses helps to make a picture clearer. Thus, O’Brian says about Norman’s driving, “On his twelfth revolution, the sky went crazy with color” (105). The choice of words in this sentence is deeply suggestive. Among other comorbidities of post-traumatic stress disorder, researchers name depression and suicidal thoughts that can affect as much as 7% of war veterans (Bullman et al.). Such a high percentage is explained by negative homecoming experiences and the inability to adapt to a peaceful environment.
Conclusion
Tim O’Brien’s work is a psychological echo of the Vietnam War in which he portrays how military actions affect soldiers who participate in them. The author states that the atrocities of war and its cruelty are not easily forgotten unless people get a positive homecoming experience. Even then, it takes time to forget the war. The idea is supported by many researchers who have examined the nature of post-traumatic stress disorder development and found military actions responsible for many cases of it. Vividly portraying war and its consequences, O’Brian warns against unleashing military actions no matter how tempting the idea may seem to various political powers.
Works Cited
Boscarino, Joseph A., et al. “Mental Health Impact of Homecoming Experience Among 1730 Formerly Deployed Veterans from The Vietnam War to Current Conflicts: Results from The Veterans’ Health Study.” The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease vol. 206, no. 10, 2018, pp. 757-765. Web.
Bullman, Tim, Aaron Schneiderman, and Jaimie Gradus. “Relative Importance of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Depression in Predicting Risk of Suicide Among a Cohort of Vietnam Veterans.” Suicide and Life‐Threatening Behavior vol 49, no. 3, 2019, pp. 838-845. Web.
Dohrenwend, Bruce P., et al. Surviving Vietnam: Psychological Consequences of the War for US veterans. Oxford University Press, 2018. Web.
Kang, Bada, Hanzhong Xu, and Eleanor S. McConnell. “Neurocognitive and Psychiatric Comorbidities of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Among Older Veterans: A Systematic Review.” International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry vol. 34, no. 4, 2019, pp. 522-538. Web.
O’Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. Web.
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