Seventh Response

This week I read “A very short story” by Ernest Hemingway and “Speaking of courage by Tim O’Brien.

“A very short story” by Earnest Hemingway is about a soldier having a love affair with an Italian nurse. Although sections of the story may not seem relevant to the topic of war trauma or post traumatic disorder, when the story is looked at as a whole, there are ideas introduced that my portray the over the negative effects that war has on individuals. I think that the concept that Hemingway is trying to convey is that war has the potential to ruin a person’s life. For instance, the story starts off with a nurse, Luz, and an unnamed soldier having a relationship and loving each other, but after they get separated from the war, conflicts arise. Before the war, the nurse was talking about how she “loved him and how it was impossible to get along without him and how terrible it was missing him at night”, and after the armistice she cheats on the soldier with the major of the battalion (Hemingway). I think that Hemingway is trying to illustrate that war creates a dark environment, such as “Living in the muddy, rainy town in the winter” filled with hopelessness and confusion in society which can lead to depression of the citizens, and ultimately  affecting the veterans emotionally (Hemingway). I also think that the short story shows how the actual killing in war is not the only causes of psychological damage that soldiers have to endure.

Other than the fact that the short story is about war, one of the main reason why I chose Hemingway’s work is because the short story is about World War 1; although it is not stated directly, the fact that the story was written a few years after WWI and that it was before WWII proves this. The reason why I think that this is significant is because “A very short story” has a different tone and plot compared to the pieces concerning wars other than WWI such as Slaughter-house five, “The things they carried”, and “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner”. For example, the world war II novel, slaughter-house five, and the WWII poem “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” is mainly about the harsh conditions that the soldiers have to fight in and how the experiences in these conditions can lead to anxiety and disorders, while Hemingway’s short story leaves out the brutal imagery that many literary works include, and reveals the broken relationships and emotional harm due to the unavoidable separation due to war. Instead of using Vonnegut’s black humor to portray the destruction of war, Hemingway uses irony to create a dramatic situation to convey his message. I think that the style and methods of exposing the effects and impact that each war has on soldiers varies in literature according to which war it was and the time period of the war.

One similarity that I thought was interesting between Slaughter-house five and the things they carried is the idea of a never-ending cycle. For example, in the slaughter-house five, the story writer talks about how writing about the bombing of Dresden feels like the limerick:

“My name is Yon Yonson,

I come from Wisconsin.

I work in a lumber yard there.

Everyone that I meet

When I walk down the street,

Says “Hello! What’s your name?”

And I say: My name is Yon Yonson… (repeated again and again)”

 

And in The Things they carried drives around the same lake twelve times (3). I am not completely sure why the authors include this idea but I think a possible reason why that Vonnegut and O’Brien do this is to illustrate the heavy and unending burden that veterans have after the war.

What I have learned from this source

I learned that the way literature portrays war trauma differs according to which war it is written about (World War I, World War II, Vietnam war, etc.). I also learned that Slaughter-house five by Kurt Vonnegut and The things they carried have several similarities such as tone and style.

Credibility

I used a website: http://records.viu.ca only to view the original text of the Hemingway’s short story “A very short story”.

 

Work Cited

Hemingway, Ernest. “”A VERY SHORT STORY” Ernest Hemingway.” Steve Lane’s ENGL 480 Class, n.d. Web. 11 Mar. 2013.

O’Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990. Print.

Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five. New York: Dell, 1969. Print.

Sixth Response

This week I analyzed a scene of a movie, coverage by NPR, and poem about war. The film that I watched was Full Metal Jacket produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick. The one scene that stood out to me was a scene in a boot camp during the Vietnam War. The scene shows a private loading his rifle in the bathroom, and when his partner and the gunnery sergeant order the private to surrender his rife, the private shoots the sergeant and commits suicide. What was interesting about this scenario was that the actual fighting and killing in the war did not influence the private to kill himself and the sergeant; the private did this because the other US marine corps recruits had beaten him with a bar of soap wrapped in a towel for the punishment the recruits had to go through due to the private’s mistakes. I think that through this part of the film Kubrick is illustrating how harsh the conditions are during the Vietnam War and the philological effects these conditions have on a soldier. The clip can be found on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hkNuykz2RE.

The poem I analyzed this week is “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” by Randall Jarrell. Since this poem was published in 1945 and Jarrell left Austin in 1942 to “join the Army Air Corps as a flying cadet”, I assume that his war poetry is specifically about World War II (Hodges). This is my interpretation of the poem:

“From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State”: The speaker is saying that he was drafted and felt like he was taken away from his home.

“And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze”: The speaker is showing his feeling of being trapped and anxiety when he is in the gun turret during the war.

“Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life”: The height of where the speaker is terrifying for him.

“I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters”: Jarrell is illustrating the destruction that war causes.

“When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose”: The speaker dies brutally and the turret is washed with a hose for the next soldier.

Although Jarrell’s poem is short in length, the tone of the poem is similar to the dark tone of Slaughter-house Five. Like the speaker, Billy is separated from his family, feels uneasy frequently, and views the damage that war can cause. I think the reason why these two pieces of literature are similar is because they both are about the same war; however, I think that if the poem or novel was about another war, the tone and theme would not differ too much since the producer of the film about the Vietnam war seemed to have a similar view on war as Vonnegut and Jarrell had.

Lastly, I looked over the information from NPR in order to learn more about soldiers and veterans from the Afghanistan war.

A fact that I thought was interesting was that “for the first time in a decade of war, more active-duty troops have taken their own lives this year than have died fighting in Afghanistan” (Lawrence). I thought that his was significant because it shows how important it is to understand the psychological effects that war has on people and that war does not only damage physically. Lawrence then talks about specific emotions and thoughts of veterans returning from the Afghanistan war. He shared that a “man on the phone says he’d be better off dead” because “he lost his house, he’s worried about his job, and he had constant physical pain since he left the service” (Lawrence). I thought that these feelings matched those of Billy’s, a World War two veteran. For instance, the speaker says that “Billy didn’t so anything to save himself. Billy wanted to quit. He was cold, hungry, embarrassed, incompetent” (34). Although “President Obama ordered measures that include doubling the staff at the Veterans Crisis Line”, I think that a lot more has to be done in order to aid veterans and prevent the climbing rate of suicide those who fought and even those who didn’t in the recent war.

What I have learned from this source

I learned that works, either it’s a poem or a film, share similar views and tones relating to war. Literature and films expose the mental and emotional damage that war experiences, whether it’s in a boot camp or on the battle field, can create. I also this depiction of trauma and disorder for different wars, such as Vietnam War, World War II, and Afghanistan war, are alike.

I would like to learn if there any subtle differences in how literature reflects trauma and illnesses caused by war, either by repeating the same thing over and over, deliberately leaving information out, using specific diction, or characterizing and describing differently.

 

Credibility

I think that NPR is credible because it is national and public. The other sources are credible.

Work cited

Full Metal Jacket. Dir. Stanley Kubrick. Prod. Stanley Kubrick. By Stanley Kubrick, Michael Herr, and Gustav Hasford. Perf. Matthew Modine, Adam Baldwin, Vincent D’Onofrio, and Lee Ermey. Warner Bros., 1987. DVD.

Hodges, Martha Blakeney. “Randall Jarrell.” University Libraries. The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2010. Web. 04 Mar. 2013.

Jarrell, Randall. “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner.” The Bedford Introduction to Literature. By Michael Meyer. Eighth ed. N.p.: Bedford / St. Martin’s, n.d. 832. Print.

Lawrence, Quil. “Suicide Hotline Fights To Keep Vets And Troops Alive.” National Public Radio. NPR. 28 Dec. 2012. Radio. Transcript.

Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five. New York: Dell, 1969. Print.

Fifth Response

I had explored the PBS article about post traumatic stress disorder and read more of Slaughterhouse-Five this week. An Important fact that the article discusses in this that a person “had to react to that situation with an extreme emotional reaction, what the American Psychiatric Association calls fear, helplessness or horror” (Friedman). I thought that this was an interesting statement because in Slaughterhouse-five, frequently, reoccurring emotions that Billy has in the story is fear which is caused by events that had happened at Dresden during World War II. For example, when Billy and a group of other soldiers were taken as prisoners of war “with the help of fear and echoes of winter silence, the voice of a dog was like a big bronze gong” (82). It is interesting that the amount of fear present in Billy’s situation can change how people view.

After the article describes the possible causes of this disorder, it goes further into the symptoms that characterize PTSD. A few descriptions of these symptoms are that the traumatic event has a life of its own, the recollections continuously intrudes at night, and that PTSD makes a person believe that he or she is back in the traumatic episode (Friedman). Similar to how the description of the causes of PTSD in the article are depicted in the novel, these symptoms are also present in the beginning of the Slaughterhouse-five; the veteran that is writing the fictional story of Billy’s journey is described to be sleepless at nights and constantly reminded of past war experiences. This shows how well Vonnegut understands the trauma that numerous veterans have.

The information that had surprised me was that “we can reproduce PTSD in the laboratory by exposing people with PTSD to traumatic reminders, and then we can measure a variety of things, whether it’s brain function or physiology or psychological thoughts” (Friedman). I do not mind that people are trying to understand PTSD better, but in my opinion, exposing people to traumatic reminders, even with their consent, is not a good method to obtain information. I think that many people, like myself, attempt to understand the effects of war on people or what emotions the people with PTSD feel, but cannot truly know without actually experiencing a traumatizing event themselves. An example from the novel that led me to think this way was when Billy had to go to the hospital. “Nobody else suspected he was going crazy. Everybody else thought he looked fine and was acting fine. They didn’t think it had anything to do with the war” (100). Although it may be difficult to understand the emotions and thoughts that traumatized soldiers have, I think that literature about war can illustrate many important concepts and facts that increases understanding on this subject. Since Vonnegut had been a prisoner of war and knows what he is writing about when it comes to war trauma, war literature, such as Slaughterhouse-five, can be an insightful and informative tool in learning more about how war affects a person psychologically and emotionally.

There are several other connections that can be made between the novel and the PTSD article. For instance, the book and the article explain that “marriages and family life are such a casualty in PTSD” and that it is hard for soldiers “to come back to the civilian population” (Friedman).

Lastly, the fact that in the most recent “war, the support for the soldiers has just been phenomenal” while “the Vietnam veterans came home, many times, to a society that was deeply divided and was very angry with them” was interesting (Friedman). The difference between the feeling and emotions of Vietnam veterans and and those of today’s veterans would be a good topic to look into more.

What I have learned from this source

I have learned more about post traumatic stress disorder. Through the PBS article, I learned the symptoms and causes, such as fear, insomnia, feelings of suicide, and flash backs, of this disorder. I have also learned that Slaughterhouse-Five closely relates to the article; Vonnegut portrays many key ideas and facts about PTSD stated in the article through his novel.

I would like to know more about the veteran that have been in wars other than World War II (Vietnam war, war on terror, etc.) and how they may have been affected by their war experiences. It would also be interesting to compare the literature on the different wars to Slaughterhouse-Five.

Credibility

PBS is a good source of information.

Work Cited

Friedman, Matthew. “What Is Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)?” PBS: The Soldier’s Heart. PBS, 1 Mar. 2005. Web. 18 Feb. 2013.

Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five. New York: Dell, 1969. Print.

Fourth Response

This week, I reread and analyzed a section of Slaughterhouse-five by Kurt Vonnegut.

After Billy came unstuck in time again, he “was terrified, because his father had said Billy was going to learn to swim by the method of sink-or-swim” (43). Because this is a novel about World War II, I was not sure at first why Vonnegut includes scenes of a fictional character’s personal life. However, after skimming through an article about post-traumatic stress disorder, I think that Vonnegut used this scenario to illustrate how Billy becomes mentally ill later on in the story. The article states that “PTSD is a recognition that if you’ve been in the wrong place at the wrong time . . . can change the way you feel about yourself and feel about the world. What’s distinct about PTSD from almost all other psychiatric disorders is that fact that there is a historical event that sets this off” (Friedman). I think that Vonnegut makes Billy travel to past events to convey the fact that war experiences are not the only cause for delusions and mental illnesses such as PTSD for soldiers like Billy.

A part that confused me was when Billy “was making convulsive sounds like laughter” when he was captured (51). I am not sure if laughter is a sign of PTSD or another disorder, but I don’t think anyone would laugh in his position.

One thing that I have noticed while reading the novel was that the plot of the story switches to non-war related topics frequently, and goes into vivid detail about these topics. For example, the story switches to Billy’s future life and how “Billy’s office was part of a suburban shopping center” and how “right outside the window was Billy’s own Cadillac El Dorado Coupe de Ville” (57).  I feel like the unnamed story writer of Billy’s journey does this because it is difficult for him to write about the destruction of war sometimes; he even said “not many words about Dresden came from my mind” in the first chapter of the novel (2).

“The neighborhood reminded Billy of some of the towns he had seen at war” (59). Similar to the moment when Billy thought it was going to be World War III after sirens went off, everyday things have the ability to remind veterans of past war memories and event.

The most interesting part of the novel for me was when Billy Pilgrim gets unstuck in time and travels to a different universe where creatures called Tralfamadorians live. Billy describes the Tralfamadorians as creatures that can communicate telepathically, have no voice boxes, and are shaped like plungers (76). I think the appearance of these creatures is random and unrelated to the novel, but it is interesting that Vonnegut included science fiction in his work. The author may be trying to portray the madness in Billy’s mind.

What I have learned from this source

I learned that war is not the only cause of disorders and illnesses such as PTSD; one’s past history can also be the source of a mental illness. The harsh treatment of Billy’s father could have led Billy to act differently and to think of things that are out of the ordinary. I also learned that it is not easy for veterans to talk about their experiences at war, and that Vonnegut’s creates a unique style and tone that depicts how the destruction of war can affect soldiers.

I would like look more into the article about post-traumatic stress disorder that Mr. Coffee recommended. I might make the topic of my senior exit project about PTSD specifically because the literature I chose seems to relate to this topic the best, but I’m not sure.

Credibility

PBS is a good source of information. It provides educational broadcasts.

Work Cited

Friedman, Matthew. “What Is Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)?” PBS: The Soldier’s Heart. PBS, 1 Mar. 2005. Web. 18 Feb. 2013.

Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five. New York: Dell, 1969. Print.

Third Response

I have recently read and explored an intriguing article that Mr. Coffee suggested to me. This article consists of a letter written by a military psychiatrist, Dr. Russell Carr, to Robert Stolorow, the author of the book Trauma and Human Existence and the person who posted the article.

I thought that the caption written by the Storolow before the actual letter was interesting. He says that we are in an “era that can increasingly be characterized as an Age of Trauma” (Storolow). I have never thought of today’s society as being in an age of trauma. I think the reason Storolow describes this era an age of trauma is because of the increasing number of veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder due to the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Another quote that I thought was useful to my senior exit project is when Dr. Russell Carr talks about what he had learned from Stolorow novel. “A disruption of one’s sense of time and ‘a shattering of one’s experiential world’ could lead to what my patients were currently experiencing, sometimes years after their combat exposure” (Stolorow). This article relates to my project because the literature that I am using is about veteran who gets unstuck in time; the setting of the story changes randomly as Billy Pilgrim, the main character, goes through different stages in his life. I think that by illustrating the disruptions of Billy’s sense of time, the author of the novel slaughter is trying to convey is the confusion and anxiety that war experiences can create for war veterans.

Another excerpt from Dr. Russell’s letter that also might relate to Slaughter-house Five is this: “Our connection, based on emotional attunement, then helped them to reconnect with others in their present lives, to process their emotional experiences from combat, and to integrate these emotions into new meanings for their lives” (Stolorow). This passage indirectly states that soldiers have relationship and communication problems with people around them. This relates to the novel because Billy has issues with communicating with and being understood by his own family and others after the war. “And Billy, meanwhile, was trying to hang onto his dignity, to persuade Barbara and everybody else that he was far from senile” (29)

Stolorow’s view that “emotional experience is inseparable from the contexts of attunement and malattunement in which it is felt” also caught my attention (Stolorow).  I agree with his belief.  I think that this is an important concept to know in order to understand the emotions of war veterans. Because Dr. Russell understood this idea, a solider with PTSD told him, “Doc, you get it more than anyone I’ve spoken to” (Stolorow).

What I have learned from this source

I learned that trauma from war is increasingly becoming a large issue due to the recent war. I also learned from the article that disruptions of a soldier’s sense of time can lead to trauma as it did in Slaughter-house Five by Kurt Vonnegut, and that emotional distress can be caused from the context of a veteran’s experiences.

I would like to know more about the recent tragedy at Ft. Hood mentioned in the letter, and what caused Dr. Hasan to open fire. After reading more of Slaughter-house Five, a question that I had was if literature about war, either poetry or a novel, deliberately leaves information out in order to portray trauma.

Credibility

I think this is a credible source because the source mainly consists of a letter written to an author of a novel about traumas of war.

Work Cited

Stolorow, Robert D. “Understanding the Traumas of War.” The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc., 12 Nov. 2009. Web. 11 Feb. 2013.

Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five. New York: Dell, 1969. Print.

Second Response

After reading a section of the novel slaughterhouse-five by Kurt Vonnegut, I decided to look more in to Vonnegut’s life and the reason why he wrote a novel about the life of a prisoner of war, Billy Pilgrim.

While surfing the web, I came across an interesting article that gave me more insight on who Kurt Vonnegut actually was. The article stated that “the defining moment of Mr. Vonnegut’s life was the firebombing of Dresden, Germany, by Allied forces in 1945, an event he witnessed firsthand as a young prisoner of war” (Smith). This information did not surprise me because Vonnegut portrays powerful emotions towards the firebombing of Dresden in slaughterhouse-five by creating the journey that Billy Pilgrim goes through.

An interesting quote that Vonnegut wrote is that he believed that “The firebombing of Dresden was a work of art” and added that it was “a tower of smoke and flame to commemorate the rage and heartbreak of so many who had had their lives warped or ruined by the indescribable greed and vanity and cruelty of Germany” (Smith). This confirms that he was a veteran that was against and strongly despises war.  The Vonnegut says that the bombing “was a work of art” reminds me of the section where Billy becomes a prisoner of war and finds “the afternoon stingingly exciting” while viewing “dragon’s teeth, killing machines, corpses with bare feet that were blue and ivory” (65).

Then the article mentions how “Mr. Vonnegut went into a severe depression and vowed never to write another novel. Suicide was always a temptation, he wrote. In 1984, he tried to take his life with sleeping pills and alcohol” (Smith). This may have been a Psychological trauma due to his past war experiences, but I am not sure.

What I have learned from this source

This article shows how similar the history of Kurt Vonnegut’s life is to the life of fictional character that he created. I now know how deeply rooted the story about Billy Pilgrim in the novel is in his life. I also learned that Vonnegut had many harsh experiences during the war, such as the destruction of his unit, sounds of constant carpet bombings, and the task of removing the dead, that may have let him to use the dark imagery illustrated and occasional shifts in tone in the novel. (Smith)

Although I learned more about Kurt Vonnegut, I still need to look at medical articles about war trauma and how other literature depicts war trauma. I want to know if Vonnegut’s thoughts of suicide and extreme depression are common emotions for war veterans to have.

Credibility

In my opinion, an article from The New York Times is a credible source. The New York Time is a daily newspaper and a well-known website. I do not think the author, Dinitia Smith, has a bias opinion because the article just gives details on his life and what Vonnegut did.

Work cited

Smith, Dinitia. “Kurt Vonnegut, Novelist Who Caught the Imagination of His Age, Is Dead at 84.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 12 Apr. 2007. Web. 03 Feb. 2013.

Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five. New York: Dell, 1969. Print.

First response to literature

The literature that I will be using is the novel Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut. Through this novel I look to analyze how literature reflects war trauma.

Important quotes and reactions

The book begins with an anonymous narrator explaining his plans on writing this book on the destruction of Dresden in World War II.  In his introduction he says, “I thought it was easy for me to write about the destruction of Dresden, since all I would have to do would be to report what I had. But not many words about Dresden came from my mind” (2). I thought that this was interesting because in other works about war, I have noticed that there is a tendency for veterans to not want to or not be able to share their experiences at war. The reason for this may be the effects of war trauma, but I am not sure.

“World War II had certainly made everyone tough” (10). I do not fully agree with this statement. People may act tough on the outside, but people can be hurt emotionally and mentally after experiencing war. This is shown later on in the story of the protagonist, Billy Pilgrim.

Throughout the novel, Billy randomly travels in different parts of his life. “Billy Pilgrim has become unstuck in time” (23). This quote confused me at first; however, I learned that this is a reoccurring event that the author uses to represent Billy’s confusion about the war and his emotional instability.

After his discharge from the army, Billy “suffered a mild nervous collapse” ( 24). This may also be an effect of war trauma but I have to look into it more.

“A siren went off, scared the hell out of him. He was expecting World War Tree at any time” (57). This shows the anxiety that Billy has due to the war. I thought that this was normal for Billy to have these emotions because I knew a veteran who strongly dislikes the the thunderous sounds of fireworks that are set off on the fourth of July. I think that anything resembling an event or an object that relates to war for an individual who has experienced war, even though others might think of it as war-related,  can trigger a sense of unease and anxiety.

What I have learned from this source

I learned that there are many possible effects that war has on a person mentally and physically. A few examples that the book portrays are confusion, uneasiness, lack of communication, and nervous collapses. I also learned how unique and different Vonnegut’s style of writing is; he changes from a first person perspective in the first chapter to a third person perspective in the following chapters which tell the discontinuous narrative of Billy Pilgrim.

After reading and analyzing Slaughterhouse-Five, new topics that I want to look further in to and research about are the life of Kurt Vonnegut, medical articles about war trauma, and how other literature depicts trauma due to war. Specifically, I want to know if Vonnegut was a veteran or a prisoner of war, learn about the different types of mental illnesses, and compare the this novel to poetry written about World War II.

Credibility

I think this is a reliable source because it was one of the works referred to on the AP Literature exams in 1991 and 2004. The Author seems to know a lot about what had happened in the Dresden during World War II.

Work Cited

Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five. New York: Dell, 1969. Print.

Text/Topic Declaration

For my senior exit project I am going to explore the effects of war trauma in literature. I also plan on looking into the destructiveness of World War II; specifically,  the firebombing of the German town of Dresden. The texts that I will use for this project are:

• Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
• The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
• The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien