Trauma In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

Having to experience the endeavors of Vietnam War is more trauma than man can handle. In the book The things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, O’Brien that narrator is a scared man who has to go against his beliefs and experience unspeakable events. Events so unspeakable that he indeed makes up parts of the story to help himself mend the past and present. The men carried more than physical weight they carried emotional, and psychological weight. The past and the present is a very long time, but when the past continues to linger in the present it makes the present unbearable to face. In the novel The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien , O’Brien explores the importance of storytelling as a means to preserve the individual to cope with a traumatic

In the novel Mitchell Sanders were talking and the narrator suggested that the physical weight isn’t the problem, the emotional weight is what lingers in your head all day. Physical weight can be put down and thrown away and forgot about, Emotional weight never goes away and it affects the present by the events of the past filling your head. “They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing, these were intangibles”(21). Tim O’Brien carries an abundant amount of emotional trauma and memories that he tries to shield himself from the

Eventually Tim thought the lies he had been telling everyone was actually the truth. Tim began convincing himself that these lies were actually the truth, but when in reality it was just a coverup to shield the truth. One day Tim’s daughter asked if he ever killed anyone, he said no, in order to make himself look like a better man and shield himself and his daughter from the truth. Tim said “This is why I keep writing war stories”(131). Tim became a writer to tell his war story, not necessarily the true war story but to tim the lies are the real story. Tim writes to mend the past and the present; to help himself overcome and heal from the devastating