Denial In The Things They Carried

The Truth Lies Within The Story When faced with trauma, every individual reacts differently and chooses to express their emotions distinctly. This is especially evident in soldiers and how they deal with loss during wartime situations. In his novel The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien explores different coping mechanisms for those in traumatic situations. O 'Brien explores the various ways with which soldiers cope with wartime experiences such as through social dependency , through denial and through storytelling in order to deepen one’s understanding the effectiveness of these coping mechanisms. He argues that the only true way to cope is by accepting the reality of the situation one is facing.
Throughout the collection, O’Brien displays …show more content…
The young soldier who had lost his girlfriend’s picture reveals that when denial is used as a way of coping, in the end the truth will always be revealed. Upon losing the picture he mentions that, “She’s not even [his] girl anymore.” Until then, he was holding on to her memory and using it as an escape from the trauma and violence that is surrounding him during the war. The loss of the picture forces him to come to terms with the truth and accept that he is no longer with her, revealing that denial only lasts until one is left to face the truth. Its inefficiency is demonstrated when the young soldier is left helplessly searching for the picture realizing that he cannot use it to comfort him anymore because she isn’t his any longer. Another soldier, Mark Fossie denied that his relationship with his girlfriend was strained. He “tried hard to keep up a self-assured pose, as if nothing had ever come between them or ever could, but there is a fragility to it, something tentative and false.” He tried to deny that his relationship with Mary Ann was deteriorating by acting as if nothing had changed between them, but the forced relationship which was regenerated through denial quickly fell apart. In the end, denial did not prove to be an effective coping mechanism because he was forced to face the truth and was left hopeless in that regard. In both cases, denial springs from not wanting accept the truth. In the end, all three of these soldiers are forced to confront the situation they are facing and accept it. Denying the situation only makes it more difficult to accept the truth when turning a blind eye to the truth is no longer an