Exploration 4 by Hunter Hires

One of the themes that I found in “The Things They Carried”  by  Tim O’Brien was  one that was found in the chapter “Night Life”. I really enjoyed this chapter for the same reason that I enjoyed the chapter “On The Rainy River” which was the fact that both of these chapters have no physical warfare in them. These chapters showcase more of a psychological battle inside of Tim O’Brien and Rat Kiley respectively to there chapters. The theme that I found in “Night Life” was that silence was the real killer in war. Now, what I mean by this is that when there is no action going, you are kinda just left with all the dark thoughts and memories that you went through during the actual physical warfare. In this chapter Tim O’Brien, a foot soldier in the Vietnam War, describes how silence ultimately made Rat Kiley (A man in his division) unhinge: “He took off his boots and socks, laid out his medical kit, doped himself up, and put a round through his foot.” (O’Brien 212). This theme is also seen in the chapter “Speaking of Courage” where Norman Bowker, another man in O’Brien’s unit, was having a tough time adjusting to civilian life because he kept calling himself a coward for not saving Kiowa’s body. Both of these chapters show why silence is possibly worse than actual gunfights because it makes you think about what you went through.

Cases of PTSD in the last few wars

One of the research questions that I had for this book was “ Were there more cases of PTSD in Vietnam compared to other wars?” The reason why I was wondering this is that a lot of times when you hear people say “I get flashbacks”, you think of Vietnam (At least I normally do because the majority of people I know who say that are Vietnam veterans”. I also had a understanding that there was a high suicide rate after Vietnam war compared to other wars so I was curious. My curiosity led me to a site called NPR.inc (National Public Radio). What they said was that there were about five times more cases of PTSD in the Vietnam war than there was in World War 2, which I found really surprising because I would have figured since there was a lot more people in World War 2 that there would be more PTSD cases in that. The website also went on to state that “Experts say a number of factors could be at play, including that America's present is rekindling ideas of its past and the Iraq war is triggering Vietnam memories” ( Lewis first paragraph). So what I really draw away from this is that, there wasn’t that many cases at the time of the war but as more time went on, more cases pop up because America wants to remember that past.