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Psychological effects of war on soldiers 2019
Psychological effects of war on children
Psychological effects of war on soldiers 2019
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In the passage from Tim O’Brien explains how the war was back then and the things that the soldiers suffered during the war. Also just the tragedies that happened in there to get to the readers and so the readers fully understand what Tim O’Brien explained. One of the terrible catastrophes that happened during the war was that the soldiers was that they got sick and started to carry diseases in battle. “ They carried diseases, among them malaria and dysentery” what O’Brien said in one part of the passage.What he did was that he explained to the readers exactly how sick the soldiers got in war and could not do anything out in battle and the only thing to do there was to just keep going and suffer with it because they had no doctor or any kind of treatment. “They shared the weight of memory. They took up what others could no longer bear”. What O’Brien explains here is that they had to carry emotion in them and which stressed them out. The reason because of this was because they saw many of the team mates die in battle and even had to carry them while very injured or wounded, therefore they had to do what others couldn't, that would put more weight on the soldiers who were more healthy …show more content…
“By daylight they took sniper fire, at night they were mortared, but it was not battle, it was just the endless march, village to village, without purpose..” When Tim says this it makes the readers that those soldiers were in war and makes it sound bad, but what he was really explaining was not war it was them marching and just walking and how tired they got of doing that. The soldiers went to one village and to another and what this caused was the soldiers to go insane in the brain and get tired physically but mostly emotionally. That's what he meant earlier in the passage and it gets to a lot of people because they were drafted and onces they got to war it would be very
...r because it seems impossible to reconstruct an event from this objective point of view. Maybe the point of telling stories is not trying to recreate the reality of a past event, but it is the message that matters because that might be in the end the only thing that does not necessarily depend on single details of the story, but on the overall picture of an event. That is why to O’Brien another important component of a war story is the fact that a war story will never pin down the definite truth and that is why a true war story “never seems to end” (O’Brien, 425). O’Brien moves the reader from the short and simple statement “This is the truth” to the conclusion that, “In war you lose your sense of the definite, hence your sense of truth itself and therefore it’s safe to say that in a true war story nohting much is ever very true” (O’Brien, 428). These two statements frame the entire irony of the story, from its beginning to its end. Almost like the popular saying “A wise man admits that he knows nothing.”
Throughout the story, the author goes into great detail about the heavy physical loads that the soldiers had to carry with them. Even the way O’Brien describes the many loads seems to grab your attention on the extreme conditions these men had to go through just to survive another day. The most interesting thing I found while reading this story is that even though the soldiers carried a ton of weight around with them, they insisted on carrying as much as possible to insist they were prepared for any given situation. Also, just as we are all different individuals, each soldier carried their own personal things that depended on their own habits and hobbies. Some examples of the necessities the soldiers had to carry with them include, “Among the necessities or near-necessities were P-38 can openers, pockets knives, heat tabs, wrist-watches, dog tags, mosquito repellent, chewing gum, candy, cigarettes, salt tablets, packets of Kool-Aid, lighters, matches, sewing kits, Military Payment Certificates, C-rations, and two or three canteens of water (O’Brien 125). These were just some of the things these men had to carry with them just to undergo some of the conditions surrounding them. Besides those items I explained things like weapons and magazines made up most of the majority of the weight. What really shocked me at this point is that with all this weight the soldiers had to carry with them, they were expected to be very mobile and able to haul around everything for miles at a time. The only benefit I could possible see coming out of all the things they carried is the protection the backpack gave the soldiers from the spraying of bullets during battle. Other than that, the more the men carried, the more their moral went down under those conditions. I think that the author brilliantly described this story. It was almost like I felt my backpack getting heavier as I was reading on and the items kept increasing. Towards the end of the story I kind of felt just as the soldiers did, weighed down and dead tired.
Several stories into the novel, in the section, “How to tell a true war story”, O’Brien begins to warn readers of the lies and exaggerations that may occur when veterans tell war stories.
Soldiers faced diseases like measles, small pox, malaria, pneumonia, camp itch, mumps, typhoid and dysentery. However, diarrhea killed more soldiers than any other illness. There were many reasons that diseases were so common for the causes of death for soldiers. Reasons include the fact that there were poor physicals before entering the army, ignorance of medical information, lack of camp hygiene, insects that carried disease, lack of clothing and shoes, troops were crowded and in close quarters and inadequate food and water.
Another unique aspect to this book is the constant change in point of view. This change in point of view emphasizes the disorder associated with war. At some points during the book, it is a first person point of view, and at other times it changes to an outside third person point of view. In the first chapter of the book, “The Things They Carried,” O’Brien writes, “The things they carried were largely determined by necessity (2).
Tim O’Brien uses the description of the items the soldiers brought with them to provide better characterization for each man. O’Brien always mentions the exact weight of the items the soldiers carried. This makes the reader feel the load of the soldiers. The first types of items that are mentioned in the story are physical items. These i...
O'Brien's repeated use of the phrase "they carried" attempts to create a realization in the reader that soldiers in wars always carry some kind of weight; there is always some type of burden that servicemen and women will forever hold onto both throughout the war and long after it has finished. The specification of what the soldier bear shows that the heaviness is both physical and emotional and in most cases the concrete objects carried manifest into the continued emotional distress that lasts a lifetime (sentence about what they carry from novel) "The Things They Carried" emphasis this certain phrase in order for those that do not have the experience of going to understand the constant pressure of burdens they are under. O'Brien draws on
...otional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing—these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight" (“Carried” 23). O’Brien showed the effect that emotional longings have on one’s thoughts & feelings. Though he tells that his novel is about story-truth, which is not about war and do not have a moral; but one can understand that O’Brien’s fiction is a message against forcing young people into war. By true-made up stories; the author shows the transformation of one’s emotional state through war and its long-lasting impact. O’Brien’s stories prove that seen physical burdens emphasize the unseen emotional burden: physical burden can be expressed in words, but emotional burden, changes that are encouraged by our surroundings cannot be expressed in words- thus they always remain untrue yet true.
Tim O’Brien is doing the best he can to stay true to the story for his fellow soldiers. Tim O’Brien believed that by writing the story of soldiers in war as he saw it brings some type of justice to soldiers in a war situation.
They were essential in showing the key parts in O’Brien’s life that lead to the turning points which lead to the creation of this novel and his ability to be at peace with what had happened in Vietnam. He finally accepted what had happened and embraced it instead of avoiding it. Works Cited Novel O'Brien, Tim.
The authors prove through their writing that war can be unfair. For example, Tim Meeker, the narrator asks,”Jerry? He is dead?” While his mom replies,”Nobody understands it. They put him on a prison ship, and he got sick and he died within three weeks” (Collier and Collier 166). Tim, presumably about twelve, had his best friend Jerry
In the beginning of the book two students had gone to visit their friend who had lost his leg. Not only was this war traumatizing for the soldiers but the family and friends of them too. The war was a painful experience for everyone ruining many people's lives. When Kemmerich was injured he was greatly agonized,the battle never really ended for him. He had pains in his foot, but he was more worried about his watch. Another example of physical injury is when the soldiers were in the trenches and a shell fell in the trench, this wounded or even killed many soldier. The war was so bad many soldiers would shoot themselves in the foot just to go home and escape the
O’Brien uses the depiction of the setting as a technique to further present Tim’s guilty feelings. On page 128, there is a vivid illustration of the scenery surrounding the deceased Vietcong soldier.
A soldier is always carrying a ton of stress, whether it is a physical strain or a mental one. The constant burden of weight being on a soldier 's shoulders is enough to break a man. In the story "The Things They Carried" by author Tim O 'Brien he writes constantly about the weight of the objects they carried with them during the Vietnam war, and at the same time explains things that caused the mental strain that they all carried. In the story the narrator describes the underlying grief all the characters experienced after one of their squad mates was shot while walking back to the campsite. It may not be spoken of at times, but even the characters themselves allude to going through different phases of grief, such as giving up the drugs or when Lt. Cross burned the photos. Soldiers were not just subject to grief America was hurting at the time with all the riots, protest, and families coping with their sons being sent off to war. In the movie Letters Home from Vietnam, a letter was left at the Vietnam memorial of a grieving mother who had lost her son, who was killed in a firefight. She goes on throughout the letter hearing of all the things he had done while in Vietnam, and how he was one of the few that didn 't change while being there. Grief effects everyone in different ways but it will always be a reoccurring theme when it comes to
O’Brien evokes an appeal to emotions throughout the excerpt to convey his condemnation for how the war eternally scarred those involved. O’Brien intended to manipulate an emotional response by stating that the war was “a kind of emptiness, a dullness of desire and intellect.” The reader could gather that the war was lonely, and O’Brien implied that to further reflect his disdainful attitude toward the war. For these soldiers to constantly feel alone, it is easy to sympathize with their situation. As O’Brien emphasized the solitude and “endless march” on the solders, his discontent with the war increases. His emotional appeal was appropriately scattered