ac9225be98f1c10b
ac9225be98f1c10b
DOI: https://doi.org/10.31973/aj.v1i145.3921
ABSTRACT:
Writing has long been related to communicating emotional
experiences. One of these experiences is war, and the Vietnam War
was a long brutal struggle divided into two periods. The first is called
the good Vietnam War, covering the years from 1964 to 1968. The
second spanned from 1968 to 1972, known as the bad Vietnam War,
through which fighting turned into guerilla war. Battles of the second
phase were characterized by savage killings of soldiers and mass
murder of unarmed civilian Vietnamese. This bad war inspired many
literary narratives in drama, fiction, and poetry. Tim O‘Brien‘s The
Things They Carried is considered one of the most read and vivid
works about this struggle. The text reflects combatants‘ engagements
in foreign lands and their inability to adjust to the trauma after the war
is over. This paper investigates the situations of various characters in
the novel and how their experiences were influential in preventing
them from normally continuing with their lives. Post-traumatic
memories and permanent feelings of guilt and confusion are the main
obstacles veterans face preempting them from indulging once again in
society.
Keywords: guilt, trauma, Tim O‘Brien, veteran, Vietnam.
1. Introduction
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public rejection. The war did not present the Americans as idealistic or
honorable, for there were many violations of the US military Law of
War and the Geneva Conventions. Many of the participants in this war
feel guilty until this day, and those who want to feel fine about it are
convincing themselves that they were trying to prevent a communist
or totalitarian regime from coming into being (Vigil 1999: 306).
Soldiers were mainly left alone with their traumas and were
considered social outcasts, making it difficult for them to reintegrate
into American society. In his ―The Reception Home,‖ Michael
Traynor frankly states how Vietnam War veterans were paid no
courtesy or respect back home:
The protesters, or the people would spit on us. The people that
said whatever we got over there, we deserved it, for being over there.
It was just total lack of respect. When I got home, my wife (now ex)
told me that she didn‘t want to hear anything about it. And I was
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literally choking trying to talk to somebody but nobody wanted to hear
it… (Traynor 1968).
Veterans have had enough in battle. Post-traumatic memories are
stored in their minds for years after the war was ended, for the
accidents they witnessed are influential to the extent of making
different persons of them. In his memoir Thomas H. Hodge says:
you have to go into a cold mind. You know, when I say that, you
know, if a buddy of yours gets shot and killed…. and once you see
this happen day in, day out - the enemy getting killed, you got bodies
lying here and there. Your mind starts to get cold (Hodge 2002).
Following a catastrophic experience, post-traumatic stress
disorder (PTSD) is defined as flashbacks, distressing memories, and
anxiety. Only five years after the Vietnam War ended, post-traumatic
stress disorder (PTSD) was formally recognized as a mental health
problem. These symptoms have been described in soldiers from many
wars for hundreds of years under various titles. Vietnam Veterans, on
the other hand, were the first to be labeled with the name "post-
traumatic stress disorder." (Gustafsson 2009: 129).
For most veterans, memories make burdens, weights they cannot
accept as part of themselves. John Carry, the retired lieutenant, states:
―we wish that a merciful God wipe away our memories of that service
as easily as this administration has wiped away their memory of us‖
(Kerry 1971). Soldiers could not assimilate into the same society they
left for Vietnam; people viewed them as criminals instead of victims,
not war heroes. Because of what they have faced of ill-treatment, most
of them felt that home is no more a place to feel secure, a place that is
strange to them, a place where people they had known put it in their
face that they should feel guilty for participating in an unjust war. In
his Passing Time: Memoir of a Vietnam Veteran Against the War,
published almost a decade after the Vietnam experience was finished,
W.D. Ehrhart (1995: 55) explains his going home after finishing a full
tour i.e., more than one year abroad in battle:
when I'd gotten back to the States, I discovered that in my
absence America had become an alien place in which and to which I
no longer seemed to belong... I was depressed and unhappy, drinking
heavily and thinking suicidally when I was sober enough to think at
all. Somewhere in the dim fog, I knew I had to get out of there … And
so within a few months of returning stateside I had requested orders
back to Vietnam where at least it made sense to be lonely.
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Exposing his frustration and anger, W.D. Ehrhart expresses his
personal and political awakening as a Vietnam veteran in the states.
His doubts about this tragic conflict were shortly affirmed after his
rebirth as an aware American and finally feeling strong enough to
announce his perspectives about the government, the country, and
himself. He felt estranged and pained trying to communicate with
others. Still, the barrier was hard to bridge between him and his
friends because of being unable to trust him, in addition to the
psychological crisis he felt in himself: ―…feeling guilty and disgusted
with myself. It was a constant battle between my near - obsessive fear
of sleeping alone and my battered sense of self-respect‖ (1995: 129).
4. Memories in The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
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"replaying," as he feels imprisoned in a cycle that constantly forces
him to think about death and loss. This makes it practically hard for
him to achieve mental tranquility free of the traumas of war (Marini,
Katherine L Fiori and Janet M Wilmoth and Anica Pless Kaiser and
Lynn M Martire 2019: 36).
The physical things that each man carries during war accompany
the emotional toll that he bears. Soldiers' emotional loads during and
after the war are grief, dread, love, and longing. Henry Dobbins, for
example, from the chapter ―Stocking,‖ carries his girlfriend‘s stocking
around his neck as a reminder of a world safe and comforting away
from war. Reinforcing the idea that femininity serves as a soothing
reminder of home, Henry Dobbins keeps it as a talisman and a good-
luck bringer (Herzog 2018: 5).
In The Things They Carried, shame and guilt are recurring and
often inextricable themes. Soldiers felt compelled to fight because
fleeing would shame them, their families, and their communities. In
addition to the embarrassment, there‘s the shame of not being
"masculine" enough—not being bold, heroic, or patriotic enough to
save the situation. They feel responsible for the deaths of troops in
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their platoons, the deaths of Vietnamese soldiers, and for being
inadequate (Hassebrock 2009: 37).
When they look for someone to blame, they look for it on a large
scale blaming the war, American voters, and the Viet Cong. On a
personal scale, they blame a physician who mistreats O'Brien's wound
or when they blame a soldier for his inadequacy to choose a proper
spot to set up camp for the night. For example, in the story ―In the
Field,‖ soldiers blame Lieutenant Jimmy Cross for placing them in a
precarious place (Tran 2010: 122).
5. Conclusion
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of villages. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a consequence of
this bloody war; it is the outcome earned particularly by the United
States.
O‘Brien ends his novel with a chapter entitled ―The Lives of the
Dead.‖ In this final chapter, he states that he writes about dead fellows
to make them alive again. In an attempt to relieve himself from the
pathos of his memory, he imagines them smiling, sitting up, and
returning to the world. To him, this is not only saving the lives of
those characters by writing their stories; writing also saves his life.
References
Anisfield, Nancy. (1987). Vietnam Anthology: American War Literature.
Madison: Wisconsin University of Wisconsin Press.
Ehrhart, W.D. (1995) Passing Time: Memoir of a Vietnam Veteran Against the
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Gerber, Megan R. (2020). The Things They Carry: Veterans and the COVID-19
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Gustafsson, Mai Lan. (2009). War and Shadows: The Haunting of Vietnam.
London: Cornell University Press.
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Hassebrock, Frank. (2009). Memory and Narrative: Reading 'The Things They
Carried' for Psyche and Persona. Ohio: Denison University, Granville.
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<https://web.stanford.edu/class/e297c/war_peace/media/hpsych.html> (Retrieved
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ذكريات ما بعد الصدمة ومشاعر الذنب في رواية تيم أوبراين "األشياء التي حملهها"
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الكلمات المفتاحية:تبل ن ،تبلصتر ،تتحمتبهبربيي،ترحاطط،تياا ااصن
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