Imagine that you experienced something terrible, unimaginable. No one understands you. You have no one to talk to. You live in fear. How would you handle it? “The brave men and women, who serve their country and as a result, live constantly with the war inside them, exist in a world of chaos. But the turmoil they experience isn’t who they are; the PTSD invades their minds and bodies.” Robert Koger said this thought-provoking quote in his book, Death´s Revenge. The quote captures the chaotic and fearful nature of PTSD. PTSD, or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, is a mental health problem that some people develop after experiencing or witnessing a life-threatening event, like combat, a natural disaster, a car accident, or sexual assault ("What Is PTSD?").
People who suffer from PTSD can have various symptoms. They often will have vivid flashbacks of the event that triggered the …show more content…
In the book All Quiet on the Western Front, the main character, Paul Baumer, and his friends fight for Germany in World War 1. The boys experience all types of trauma throughout the book. Unfortunately, none of the main characters survived the book. However, if they had, it is very believable that they would have suffered from similar symptoms as those of PTSD, or PTSD itself. At one point in the book, Paul went home on leave. At one point, Paul says, “It will be like this too, if I am lucky, when the war is over and I come back here for good. I will sit here just like this and look at my room and wait” (Remarque 145). Later, he says, “Nothing stirs; listless and wretched, like a condemned man, I sit there and the past withdraws itself. And at the same time I fear to importune it too much, because I do not known what might happen then. I am a soldier, I must cling to that” (Remarque 147). While these quotes do not directly show symptoms of PTSD, they show that for the brief time that Paul was home, he was suffering because of what he had went through in