Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

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The Vietnam War was a horrific, life altering event for many soldiers. Not only did they deal with homesickness and having to cope in a new land, they faced fatal situations each day that included them witnessing the deaths of close friends and secretly wondering if theirs was the next to occur. Most would not be able to even imagine what this would be like. In “The Things They Carried” Tim O’Brien gives a detailed account of his time spent in Vietnam. More importantly, he showed how they overcame it; how they survived more than bombs and bullets. O’Brien’s account gave readers a true look at PTSD, how it morphs you, and how they overcame it. Through storytelling, O’Brien gave us the devastating results of the condition, however he also showed readers how it morphed it. This was done with story about Mary Anne Bell.
Despite their heartbreak they could not openly display their emotions. They could not cry because soldiers do not cry. Such an emotional display like crying would be sign of weakness and they didn’t …show more content…
He wrote a letter to O’Brien that he put in his story entitled “Notes.” But that is all he had just one letter, but there where countless days of just driving around a lake in his home town wishing he had someone, anyone to talk to about what happened to his friend in the war (134). Bowker wasn’t like most PTSD’s who could only talk to other soldiers. He wanted everyone to know what the soldiers went through in Vietnam and he wanted to be able to do that through story telling. O’Brien also was never able to talk about what happened in the war, instead he wrote them all down. Writing his story was O’Brien’s outlet, Bowker could have had used this type of outlet, but he needed more to make the full transition into peacetime. Without this outlet, Norman Bowker killed himself. He was unable to bring his past into his present to find peace and
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