A Look at Ernest Hemingway’s “Soldier’s Home” Compared to WWI and Shell Shock

Between 1914 and 1918, over nine million soldiers and five civilians were killed and seven million men disabled permanently (Mintz). This tragic phenomenon is known as World War I. Leaving the world with $186 billion direct costs and $251 billion indirect costs, this World War is known to be the most expensive war in history (Mintz). These four years also impacted the civilians not involved in the war severely. Women were given a chance to have a job in the workforce, children had to work in order to feed themselves, and an influenza epidemic was brought into communities (Mintz and Wotherspoon). World War I soon turned into a “group effort”; it turned into a Total War. Initially starting off as an encouraging and positive experience, World War I eventually turned into a brutal, selfish, and chaotic battle, and left millions of

POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER IN WAR VETERANS SC-PNG-0000009299 Alwin Aanand Thomson American Degree Program SEGi College Penang 1.0 INTRODUCTION Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a severe anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to any event that results in psychological trauma. This event may involve the threat of death to oneself or to someone else, or to one's own or someone else's physical, sexual, or psychological integrity, overwhelming the individual's ability to cope. As an effect of psychological trauma, PTSD is less frequent and more enduring than the more commonly seen acute stress response. Diagnostic

After the Vietnam War, soldiers suffered from posttraumatic stress disorder in countless numbers. The trauma they saw, endured, and witnessed forever changed and scared their lives. Men, like Tim O'Brien the author of the novel The Things They Carried, suffered from posttraumatic stress disorder and it took them years to

(O’Brien 1519). The symptoms vary with each soldier depending on how the soldier faced and took in the war. Though the symptoms are: re-experiencing, such as reliving, hallucinations, flashbacks, or feeling/acting as though the trauma is happening again. (Finely 11) This can cause major disorientation in the soldier, which causes pain to the veteran and family who they associate with. Avoidance/Numbing is also a symptom, this symptom affects feelings, although it may be hard to explain, it is the attempt to avoid thoughts, feelings or discussions of the trauma (Finely 11); for soldiers in war it may be the war in all. The Soldiers in “The Things They Carried” (Lieutenant Cross) kept to himself about how he felt when his man was shot, he felt he was supposed to protect him and so he avoided the others and his feelings about that situation (O’Brien 1525). Hyperarousal is something simple but something that soldiers have an intensified amount of. The trouble of falling or staying asleep, may be because they don’t want dreams of what they have gone through, the exaggerated startle response is because how they trained to survive the war (Finley 11), a simple wake up may put them in fight for life mode. Soldiers face difficult times in the war, and they don’t realize the harm that happened to them from the war.

“My mind is on fire as I fear that any second, another enemy round will rip into my body and finish me off” (Johnson 2). Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) effects the lives of many soldiers after returning home from war. PTSD is a psychiatric condition described in the DSM-IV

Likenesses that identify with those of this disease can be found all through the story "The Things They Carried." Men and women of prior wars moreover mirrored the shared characteristics related to PTSD. In days of old, it was named "Shell Shock" and "Battle Fatigue." Because of studies directed by medical research organizations, e.g., The National Institute of Health (NIMH) we know and

The freedoms Americans enjoy come at a price; brave military men and women often foot the bill. Many men and women pay with their lives; others relive the sights, sounds, and terror of combat in the form of PTSD. Several causes and risk factors contribute to the development of PTSD.

PTSD has become quite common in war veterans, seeing that they have been around people being brutally killed and probably have even killed people themselves. Essentially what is happening from a neuroscientific standpoint is that the brain has become damaged, in that an incorrect synapse fires, making the body react as if it was going through or seeing something terrible. The National Institution of Mental Health describes it like so:

All Quiet Essay The Novel All Quiet On The Western Front illustrates the effects of war can be highly effective on most soldiers. In this particular novel these characters go through some many hardships and are tested to the maximum. In many ways, World War I demanded this depiction more than any war before it completely altered mankind’s conception of military conflict with its catastrophic levels of carnage and violence, its battles that lasted for months, and its gruesome new technological advancements that made killing easier and more impersonal than ever before.

One of the most well known and most common mental conditions that afflict veterans is PTSD. PTSD stands for post traumatic stress disorder and is caused by having high stress levels at any given time. While anyone can get PTSD, Veterans acquire it most often due to their

Veterans suffer from PTSD in multiple ways with sleeplessness, nightmares, and flashbacks (Bender). Veterans use different coping mechanisms to prevent themselves from triggering memories of the traumatic event. It has been found that veterans may become emotionally detached. Mintze reports, the Veterans Administration estimates that 830,000 Vietnam vets suffered symptoms of PTSD; of that number, 480,000 were so deeply affected that they were considered disabled. The effect of such cruel attacks has made it difficult for soldiers to adjust to life post combat (Price). This sickness can happen within three months to years after the unpleasant event. Frequently, veterans and victims of war suffer relentlessly from PTSD. Many poets, authors, and directors write to portray the lasting memories that cause one to suffer from this disorder.

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a psychiatric disorder that may develop after experiencing or seeing a traumatic, brutal, or life-threatening happening. World War Two was a long and violent war, for the young men drafted it was nothing short of hell. Soldiers faced the hard reality of fighting on the front line; not only did war end lives and leave physical scars, but also eternal physiological impacts. Trauma from constant

World War II is still seen today as one of the most lethal wars in history. As technology advanced, more destructive weapons were created. In the hands of the wrong people and those forced to use them, these weapons paved the way for physical and psychological destruction. Furthermore, the mentality of individuals during this time enabled more marring upon themselves and upon other individuals. Even though what we now refer to as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, existed before World War II, this time period brought about a higher prevalence of PTSD, as well as began to change the way this disorder was perceived by people.

While PTSD was not yet defined it was clear that these symptoms were caused because of the disturbing things that had been seen. With no treatments available and a stigma that the effected persons were cowards or scared soldiers were often sent home with no supervision. During World War I physicians began calling it “shell shock” or “combat fatigue”, they believed that concussions caused by the impact of shells disrupting the brain caused the symptoms. Treatments included hospitalization and electric shock therapy. By World War II medical personnel noticed that soldiers that were engaged in longer more intense fighting had much higher levels or psychiatric disturbances and started using the term battle fatigue or combat exhaustion. Soldiers were being labeled as fearful and lacking in discipline and PTSD was still not fully recognized as a disorder, at this time treatment included barbiturates.

Before the actual use of this term, the disorder was not called by this term. Instead it was known as combat fatigue during the war years. A person with PTSD is defined as someone who “has experienced, witnessed, or been confronted with an event or events that involve actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of oneself or others, and his/her response involved intense fear, helplessness, or horror.” Along with this definition, many of those veterans who had experienced traumatic events during World War II, experienced periods of flashbacks and hallucinations which caused many to either seek some form of psychiatric help, or mostly try to deal with it by suppressing their feelings by drinking, avoidance, or even suicide. For soldiers who were apart of the Nyasaland KAR, they were also not immune from the effects and trauma of war. For many of them, they experienced many of the same problems stemming from their experiences in