A theme found in the chapter, Good Form, is that sometimes you dont have to physically do an action to be held responsible for it. This is important to the story because it means that the soldiers will carry guilt with them for things which they didnt even do. This means that the psychological impact of the war on the soldiers is much greater than without this theme or idea. In the chapter, Good Form, Tim O’Brien discribes how he both did and did not kill a man on a trail near My Khe. Tim states that both of these claims are true even though we know this is not possible because they contradict each other. “‘Daddy, tell the truth,’ Kathleen can say, ‘did you ever kill anybody?’ And I can say, honestly, ‘Of course not.’ Or I can say, honestly, ‘Yes’” This quote gives perspective into how Tim O’Brien feels about the death of the man near My Khe. He may not have physically killed the man, but he feel responsible for his death in the way as if he did kill him. This captivates the theme of responsiblility by association very well.
My research question was, how do the rates of diagnosed cases of ptsd from the vietnam war compare to those from more recent wars. I found that there were 2.7 million veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan compared to 2.6 million who served in Vietnam, according to veteransandptsd.com. According to medlineplus.gov, ptsd affects 31% of vietnam vets compared to 10% of Desert Storm vets and 11% of Iraqi freedom vets.
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| Chart of rise in ptsd separated by conflict, From the LA times |
The stats that you gave were super interesting! I wonder why there were so many more vets from Vietnam that suffered from PTSD in comparison to the other wars?
ReplyDeleteThe theme you found in the chapter good form stuck out a lot to me too, the way that he dedicates a whole chapter just about how he feels responsible for something he did not do, he can't tell himself that he is fine because of how he feels responsible. Even though it is a short chapter it has so much internal monologue in it describing how he feels.
ReplyDeleteI actually didn't like the chapters where it broke away from character and it's just Tim O'Brien openly saying that a lot of the book wasn't true. That part almost ruined the book for me because I got invested in the characters and then O'Brien just says that it was all fiction. I feel like a prologue explaining this may have been better then just O'Brien out right telling us this halfway through the book.
ReplyDeleteThe ptsd statistics you provided are very interesting, and so is your TTTC theme. I think we can all think of an event in our lives that we feel guilty about, even if we did not directly commit the act.
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