Critical Understanding of World War One Themes - Essay Example

due Critical understanding of World war one themes The great world war of 1914 to 1918 brought an apocalyptic change in the fictional views of both the current war and future war. The unprecedented death toll of the war suggested that war can be viewed as a massive artificial or to be more specific a large man-made disaster. A lot of authors and poets used this as inspirations in their writings of poets, books and articles because of the horrors of the war and the trauma that tested to destruction the capacity of ‘realist’ modes of literature showed the surreal extremity as a human experience. The war was declared by Austria Hungary on Serbia and it spread rapidly to Russia, Great Britain, France and Germany because they were involved in treaties and hard to defend the nations. The war continued but there came a time when frustrations, depression, demoralization sickness and even hopelessness due to the loss of lives engulfed the troops. But finally the war came to an end in the late falls of 1918 after the involved member countries of the Central Powers signed an armistice agreement. Each of them had to sign. The ending of the war had some significance importance, for instance Germany was severely punished and this led to World War II as many historians tend to believe. There are many articles and books written containing the description of World War and the themes found. In this paper I will try explaining various themes as described by different authors in relation to the issues on gender, war and trauma. The overwhelming loss of loved ones in the First World War led people to become iconic writers like Virginia Woolf, Wilfred Owen, and Sassoon among others. Such writers embraced some form of mysticism in order to cope. They had experienced unexplainable and unimaginable losses of loved ones and trauma in their early lives which helped them is sensitive to losses friends and relatives in the war. They were fascinated with the works of a psychical researchers especially Frederic Myers that included potential extensions of personality for example clairvoyance, telepathy and automatic writing a phenomena that enhanced personality survival discouraged its death. Literature analysis of the First World War literature and psychobiography showed that engagement of the writers with mysticism and spiritualism was not misleading at all but constituted a more ethical, creative and therapeutic form of mourning. It was better than finding solace from state-sanctioned representations of mourning such as war memorials. ‘The Kind Ghosts’ is one of Owens’s most difficult poems. This poem uses complicated poetry imagery to express its meaning. It is a bitter commentary on women and how they are protected from the reality of war. The women do not know or as shown in the poem, do not care about the sacrifices being made on the front. Owen uses the image of a shade to represent ignorance. As a metaphor the image made women appear foolish by driving knowledge away from them. That word “shades” can either mean ghosts or spirits who were not disturbing her or trying to make her sad or it can also mean the ghosts do not exist and the woman is not afraid of their presence since they are non-existent to her. According to Owen, the people at home were ignorance by choice and it was amusing. The separation between the warriors and the entire soldiers’ team with the common civilians was so evident during World War I, that it formed the main and most frequent theme. Shell shock developed during this time to describe the state of mental anguish and disarray experienced by soldiers when they returned home from the home front. The soldiers found it difficult to adapt to “normal life” after the war and the ignorance of the people at home only made the situation worse for them. The army language and training had its impacts on the literal styles of Wilfred Owen. Owen began is training in October 1915. The day o his enlistment gave him his first close-up view of the British soldiers, on medical parade. His thoughts about the soldiers are that they were fine, healthy animals and despite the typhoid immunization, he was physically happy which he continued to show on his letters. After Owen gets enlisted, his poems become more extensive. In his previous works the human body was largely made of pale skin, lips, cheeks, hand, hair, and eyes but due to the changes in his lifestyle the representation of the body changed to developing muscles, back and thighs, muscles and a tanned skin. This was not ironical since the disciplines of army life gave soldiers a transformed relish in animal pleasures. According to the book Not about Heroes by Stephen MacDonald look into the works and lives of war poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. The play focuses on the time spent in Craiglockhart War Hospital in 1917 where Owen was recovering from shell shock and Sassoon was being kept after his infamous declaration against the war and was deemed to be suffering from the shell-shock to offer an explanation of his outbursts. The play explores the relationship between the two men. It shows how the two poets played their part in revolution by creating a future which is now our present trough their force of imaginations that included an accurate description of the horror of war and the evocation of suffering. Sassoon and Owen saw the war as it was and they fully understood its futility and the sufferings. They both knew the importance of feeling, before facing up to what can be done. They understood that it was not just enough to feel the pain of war; they made it their responsibility to communicate their feelings to the world. The “pity of war” was Owens’s main theme. “My subject is war” (MacDonald et al 73). The two poets used poetry to show the truth that could change the world. They tried to make the world a better place. A lot of people do not need protection from being shocked. They need to be shocked a great deal more than they are. There are various themes that include the art and craft of writing, collective memory, the human cost of war and the bonds between soldiers among other themes. The book is not about heroes as Owen wrote, “Nor is it about deeds, or lands, nor anything about glory, honor, might, majesty, dominion or power, except War. Above all I am not concerned with poetry(Kerr 99). My subject is War and the pity of war. The poetry is in the pity.” Stephen represents their relationship as emotional which somehow seems to embarrass them this is seen when Siegfried feels glad that he was not seen embracing Wilfred and also in the description of Sassoon in his letters as “Dearest of Friends” Owen shows timidity and his determination by saying he will be a poet and he also shows agonies of imagined cowardice and the bitter recognition of war’s obscenity. Sassoon’s portraits show compassion, anger, despair, loss, physical and emotional trauma and literary generosity which is accompanied by intensity of feeling. The book demonstrates the effects of war and their effect on humans which includes injury, trauma both physical and psychological and the emotional distresses faced by the soldiers and their friendships made. Pat Barker’s Regeneration tries to show the internal struggles of the soldiers in the World War I and the attempts of overcoming the traumas of war experiences. The soldier’s psychological traumas were treated through hypnosis which is seen on page 51. Here we see Billy Prior attempting to convince Dr. Rivers of his specific need for hypnotherapy to help him remember his repressed memories. By recovering these painful memories the patients are able to embrace emotions rather than suppress them. Prior is an example of the need to alter masculinity in order to embrace emotions and be healed which is a theme in Regeneration. Masculine roles alterations allow men to embrace their emotions which are seen through hypnosis. One example that illustrates the altering of gender roles with hypnotherapy is seen though emotional expression. The soldiers in this book view emotional suppression as equal to manliness and lack of physical contact for the reason of comfort. Prior says that he does not think talking helps. It churns things up and makes them seem more real. He is not eager to display his emotions to Rivers. However, he considers completely changing his physical structure in an effort to display his real emotions and face as the best option to open up. The treatment of using hypnosis helps us see how traumatic war was for the characters in the novel. Many of the traumatic experiences were found in the suppressed memories that were discovered through hypnosis. The memories were mostly horrific and painful but unveiling them helped the soldiers to face their pasts and understand why the memory as hidden. The healing process needed the male patients to alter their typical masculine gender roles. Hypnosis made Prior work through his pain. Elaine Showalter’s The Female Malady shows it in a simple way how the psychiatric domain positions and treatment of women. The association of madness was developed by historians of women’s history. New codes of respectable behavior were introduced and weighed heavily on women and hindered their freedoms. The status of the middle class family rested on the wife and did not work beyond the home. The Victorian medical science defined women in biological terms as naturally passive, dependent, sexually disinterested and born to be mothers and ‘helpmeets’ to men. These beliefs reduced women’s and girls’ freedom of expression and they had limited access to good employment, education and ownership of property. And the women who rebelled against these codes of behavior were diagnosed as mad for showing unwomanly and unnatural behaviors. ‘Women insanity is mainly liable on the controlled intellectual and social lives that the middle class women were required to live in. The Victorian society viewed sexuality as what defined a woman’s quality. She was viewed as a ‘weak’ character and the virtues of chastity and sexual segregation protected her while the men were strong, upright and disciplined to offer protection to the ‘weak, dependent woman’ this was the ideal male according to the Victorian society. Women were viewed as easy targets of mental stability by the doctors and in order to control this, the doctors protected them by regulating their cycles and sexuality. Women’s bodies were regulated by regulations of their minds while young girl’s menstruation was delayed as per the advice provided to their mothers. Cases of female irregular tempers and female insanity were treated using the practice of clitoridectomy. This practice prevented female sexuality to reproduction but not female sexual pleasure elimination that was viewed as a symptom of madness. Our culture scrutinizes the female species as being more susceptible to irrational and mental imbalanced which is mostly predisposed by the questions of sexuality and gender. But Elaine has tried to show the portrait of the contribution of psychiatry to the wrongs of women. She has been praised for bringing up important and disturbing questions about the politics of interpretation and power of gender as determining factor in psychiatric treatment. Her main focus is on the treatment and not the profession. Works cited Barker, Pat. Regeneration. Boston: Compass Press, 1996. Print British Poets Of The Great War. Choice Reviews Online 26.01 (1988): 26-0122-26-0122. Web. Caeser, Adrian. The human Problem in Wilfred Owens Poetry. Critical Quarterly 29.2 (1987): 67-84. Web. Kaplan, Susan, and Robert Giddings. The War Poets: The Lives And Writings Of Rupert Brooke, Robert Graves, Wilfred Owens, Siegfried Sassoon, Edmund Blunde, And The Other Great Poets Of The 1914-1918 War.. The Journal of Military History 53.2 (1989): 197. Web. Kerr, Douglas. The Disciplines Of The Wars: Army Training And The Language Of Wilfred Owen. The Modern Language Review 87.2 (1992): 286. Web. MacDonald, Stephen. Not About Heroes. New York: S. French, 1987. Print. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Between Men. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985. Print. Showalter, Elaine. The Female Malady. London: Virago, 2009, 1987. Print. Read More