'Jim's Essay Jim'

While reading the essay “Jim” I cannot help but feel that the narrator was trying to represent the character of Jim as a person with serious psychological problems. Jim seems to be suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder as the result of being a marine in the Vietnam War. After returning from Vietnam, Jim was not able to adapt to society and instead escaped mentally into a world of poetry. PTSD Stands for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and usually stems from an experience where there was a genuine fear for their safety, or they witnessed something horrible happen to a loved one or anyone else. In the story, Jim seems as someone who has completely detached himself from his present environment and is no longer a part of that community. Those who know him do not understand him, and he does not let them in either. In the testimony of many war veterans with PTSD, they state that they felt no one understood them, that they could not open up to others, and therefore their relationships suffered greatly. Many got into drugs, depression, and other behaviors that were …show more content…
134, and people with PTSD continue to feel stressed and frightened even when they are no longer in danger. Jim also has difficulty in his marriage when the narrator states that Jim’s “wife, who was a poet, would every so often threaten to leave him” pg 134. Therefore even though it is not clearly stated, I assume that he was having problems with drugs or alcohol but because he does not want to fight anymore, “No more fighting, Jim used to say” pg 134, it is hard to say if he was referring to only the war or also his spouse. There isn’t enough evidence to deduce this, it is open to