Psychological Disorders In Hamlet And The Things They Carried

The Things that Changed Us

In the play “Hamlet” and the novel The Things They Carried the main characters both suffer from a psychological or mental disorder. Throughout the play “Hamlet”, Hamlet exerts signs of suicide, loss of interest in the things, and poor logic and reasoning. While in The Thing They Carried, Tim O’Brien describes himself suffering from stress, memory problems, and life-like flash backs. All of these are certain signs of a particular psychological condition.

Hamlet’s psychological condition that became relevant as the play went on was that he suffers from the Bipolar I disorder which causes very impulsive actions. The Health Reference Center describes Bipolar I as, “Classic bipolar disorder, with depressive and manic

symptoms of equal severity and length of episode” (Bipolar Disorder 2). Hamlet first started showing signs of his disorder when he was talking to himself after the ghost (dead king Hamlet) told Hamlet of his vile murder, which causes Hamlet to become vengeful and say, “Ill wipe away all trivial, foolish items, all the maxims in books, all images, all past impressions noted with youth and powers of observation” (Shakespeare 83). Both manic and depressive episodes are exhibited here by Hamlet with him showing signs of the manic stage with a cynical and unrealistic perception of his abilities, and of the depressive stage with him describing the loss of interest in other activities. Another symptom of Bipolar Disorder is poor logic and reasoning in where Hamlet is watching Claudius (his step-father) and says in his mind, “Now I could easily, now while he’s praying. And now I’ll do it. And so he goes to heaven? And so I take revenge” (Shakespeare 201). Hamlet’s fruitless attempt to accomplish what was troubling him for so long which only reassures the fact that Hamlet suffers from being Bipolar.
Tim O’Brien’s Mental illness comes to light after you hear of his story-truth personal experiences in the Vietnam War.

He tells stories and accounts that encompass symptoms pointing towards Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). John Haley describes PTSD as, “A psychological disorder that can occur as a result of experiencing or witnessing an extremely stressful event” (Haley 1). A severe symptom of PTSD that Mr. O’Brien shows towards the end of the novel is where the person will become belligerent and relive their unsightly traumatic event or events over and over again, “At night I sometimes drank too much. I’d remember getting shot and yelling out for a medic and then waiting and waiting. Passing out once, then waking up and screaming some more….. I kept going over it all in every detail” (O’Brien 200-201). Another symptom related to PTSD is that the person will become detached from the outside world or depression. O’Brien describes his time after the war as, “I survived but its not a happy ending” (O’Brien 61). PTSD can cause a variety of effects; one effect that Mr. O’Brien reveals is about memory loss and goes on to say, “What sticks to memory, often, are those odd little fragments that have no beginning and no end” (O’Brien 98). In conclusion all these symptoms of story-truth Tim O’Brien point to him having post traumatic stress

disorder.
Hamlet and Tim O’Brien are the same in that they both experience anguish from a significantly serious psychological condition. Hamlet suffered from the grief of his father’s murder; which caused him to develop the illness bipolar disorder. Tim O’Brien describes his perilous Vietnam war experience with such detail to make you feel as if you were there. He describes himself experiencing the symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder in the war torn country of Vietnam. Hamlet suffers from being bipolar while Mr. O’Brien suffers from PTSD.