Study Of War Trauma In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried

With the beginning of 20 th century and the occurrence of two world wars, more and more writers start focusing on the influence of war to human beings. Meanwhile, the war novels along with them board on the stage of literature. For the critics, the mental trauma that is caused by wars is the main focus. Having experienced wars for several times, there appear many war novelists in the United States, and the Vietnam War is one of the wars they pay a lot of attentions to. Tim O’Brien is one of the outstanding war novelists who creates many representative literary works based on his own Vietnam War experience. The Things They Carried is one of his works which gives rise to public attention, and is evaluated as one of the best novels of the year by the New York Times.The criticism of The Things They Carried at home mainly focuses on two aspects: one is about the veterans’ trauma, and the other is the study of its unique narration method.However, this thesis combines the three aspects of trauma in the novel together: the trauma experience of veterans, the representation of traumatic symptoms and the trauma recovery. First of all the Vietnam War veterans experience war trauma; meanwhile as one of the veterans, O’Brien’s narration has some symptoms of trauma experience; and in the end some veterans fail to recover from trauma and some succeed. Through the analysis of three aspects of war trauma in the novel, it constructs the path to approach trauma, understand trauma, and help traumatic victims recover from trauma.There are five chapters in this thesis. The first chapter is about the introduction, which mainly introduces Tim O’Brien and his work The Things They Carried, including the study at home and abroad, history of Vietnam War and trauma theory. The second chapter is about the trauma experience of veterans, including their witness of the death, the loss of purity and the wreck of heroic dream. After the Vietnam War, the veterans go back to the United States. However, they cannot adjust to the normal social life, and are always filled with the sense of marginalization and nervousness. The third chapter is the representation of traumatic symptoms, which contains repetition, non-logicality and the first-person narration. The three traumatic symptoms all represent the narrator’s traumatized narration in the novel. The fourth chapter is about the possibility for trauma recovery of veterans. Having experienced the war trauma, some of the veterans fail in recovery, because they cannot integrate into the society, and lose the ability to love. While some of the veterans successfully get their recovery, and reconnect with the society.