The Vietnam War's Effects on Soldiers

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After the Vietnam War, soldiers suffered from posttraumatic stress disorder in countless numbers. The trauma they saw, endured, and witnessed forever changed and scared their lives. Men, like Tim O'Brien the author of the novel The Things They Carried, suffered from posttraumatic stress disorder and it took them years to regain their lives after their return home. In the excerpt from his novel, O'Brien shows the reader how the men endured this mind-altering experience in the jungles of Vietnam through the details of all the items the men carry.

Men in the Vietnam War did not know why they were there fighting in Vietnam and what their purpose was there. The United States justified their involvement in the war by asserting that they were combating communism and preventing communistic North Vietnam from taking over the more democratic South Vietnam. This affected the soldiers because they did not know why they were there killing the innocent villagers and civilians. They destroyed land and crops to combat the Viet Cong and the effects of Agent Orange, the toxin used to destroy the vegetation, are still prevalent today. A second reason the United States (U.S.) justified their implication in the Vietnam War was to prevent the spread of communism across Asia. The U.S. came up with the Domino Theory and said that if Vietnam became a communist country then so would the countries around it and so on and so forth (Herring). This war on communism did not bring any solutions because even today Vietnam is still a communist country; therefore, the soldiers do not feel they had fought for a real cause. No one received anything that was satisfactory to him or her from the war. The men ended up going home scared for life at the violence and deat...

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...the assistance the needed to treat their PTSD.

Works Cited

Bremner, J. "Chronic PTSD In Vietnam Combat Veterans: Course of Illness and Substance Abuse." ProQuest. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Nov. 2011. .

Doyle-Portillo, Susann, and Ellen Pastorino. What Is Psychology?. Australia: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, 2006. 490-491. Print.

Herring, G. "The Cold War and Vietnam." ProQuest. APA 6th - American Psychological Association, 6th Edition, n.d. Web. 28 Nov. 2011. .

"National Center for PTSD - What is PTSD?." United States Department of Veteran Affairs. N.p., 1 Jan. 2007. Web. 30 Nov. 2011. .

O'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. Ed. X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 11th ed. New York: Longman, 2010. 595-607. Print.

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