World War I Themes - Essay Example

due World war one themes World War I began on 28th July 1914 when war was declared by Austria Hungary on Serbia. The war spread rapidly to Germany, Russia, Great Britain and France because they were mainly involved in the treaties which became an obligation for them to defend some nation. It reached a point in the war where the troops became exhausted, demoralized, and sick and others lost their lives. Trauma and injury also accompanied the war. The war finally came to an end in the late fall of 1918 when the member countries of the Central Powers each signed armistice agreements. Germany was severely punished which led to World War II as many historians believe. There are many articles and books that contain writings including poets about the war with different themes. In this paper I will try explaining different themes according to different sources used and relate them to contemporary issues of gender, war and trauma. In addition to the many events that marked the beginning of the First World War, Stephen MacDonald wrote a play known as Not About Heroes that takes a courageous glance into the lives and works of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon who were war poets. The play is based upon their time in Craiglockhart War Hospital in 1917 where Owen was recovering from shell-shock also known as neurasthenia while Sassoon was being kept in there after he made a declaration against the war which was announced in the House of Commons and was declared to be suffering from shell-shock to provide an explanation of his outbursts. Sassoon is a well established and connected man and Owen a timid, stammering fan that grows to a confident determined poet whose creativity was unlocked after meeting his friend Sassoon. This book portrays the friendship of the two men and their war poems. The strong relationship formed between soldiers, the memories and experiences they had, the writings and literature skills and the sacrifices made by the soldiers in the war are among the themes in this book. Owen says that he is only concerned with the war and not poetry, for him poetry is in the pity. He is not concerned with honor or power or fame and glory, just War.” MacDonald tries to shun open reference to the sexuality of either the two. He 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 shyness 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. Another war novel is Regeneration by Pat Barker that was published in 1991. This was a historical anti-war novel which looks at the experiences of British army officers who were being treated for shell shock during the war. This book contains he stories of the above mentioned poets and a psychologist W.H.R Rivers who made treatments for posttraumatic stress disorder. Barker tries to explore the effects of war on identity, social structure and masculinity. It mainly draws attention to the psychologist’s research on psychological practices. Pat captures the psychological situations of the characters especially the characters that were writing poetry. The theme of war is shown in the novel by the focus on the effects of losses in the time of war. She focuses on how the soldiers view their experiences. The society tries to make the casualties of war to be more theoretical and thus many do not understand the experiences and losses the soldiers go through. But Pat tries to show the effects of war, including the mutilation and death and explains it in ways that normal conceptual typical warfare categories do not. The regeneration trilogy tries to explain the unofficial war parts. Pat states that there are two things that happen to soldiers during a war: “they get killed or they come back more or less delight. It’s really focusing on the people who do come back more or less alright; they are either physically disabled or mentally traumatized” The theme of Masculinity is also seen in the novel. The traditional model of masculinity in Britain which included mental strength, bravery, honor and confidence which Sassoon and Owen had to deal with. It was discrimination during the war which affected the identity of shell shocked soldiers but therapy could help the soldiers to shape and help them rethink about this model of masculinity. The use of a mental hospital in the novel and the presence of a psychologist who treats the soldiers about their war trauma show the focus are on psychological effects of the war. The approach to the treatment of the soldiers as shown in the novel had roots in the Freudian treatments of hysteria which involved expression of compassionate understanding for patients and helping them interpret dreams. On the issue of gender, critics showed their interests on the place of women within the novel. Pat’s novel provides a voice for the home front since most books typically portray women as the silenced group who stay home and cry while the men go to war to fight. In the regeneration trilogy the women are very significant and are listened to. They have their roles in the war for instances, the women in the munitions factories were expected to produce weapons to kill thousands. This helps in dealing with domestic repercussions of the war by an author who was not a male soldier during the war. Regeneration also explores the internal struggles of the soldiers and their attempts to overcome their war experiences and trauma. The soldiers were treated by use of hypnosis as seen on page 51 when Billy Prior is trying to persuade Dr. Rivers of his specific need for hypnotherapy for him to recall the suppresses memories. The male patients after undergoing the therapy and embracing their emotions they heal and they no longer repress their emotions. Hypnosis generates different levels of perception, increased attention and motor functions, increased memory and elevated intellectual functions. It is used mostly to relieve all types of physical pain. In the war, due to the shortages of psychiatrists, hypnosis was used for phobia treatment e.g. anxiety and panic disorders. Alteration of masculine gender roles helps men embrace their emotions which are mostly seen through hypnosis. The soldiers viewed emotional repression as equal to their manliness and lack of physical contact for their comfort and the usage of hypnosis disagree with that idea since it releases hidden feelings and thoughts. Prior tells Rivers that he does not think talking actually helps in anything. He is not willing to express his feelings to the doctor in a full conscious state but he really does want to go through a completely physical submission for him to let his true emotions be seen and face his painful memories. After the therapy Prior starts crying thus relieving his emotions. The complete submission to emotions got through hypnosis that included putting aside the masculine gender role helped Prior to heal his traumatic experiences. Men should try unemotional masculinity for them to be healed. The British poets were expressing the anguished cry experienced during the war. They vividly illustrate the trench poets of World War I. they mainly show the dual uniqueness of idealism and patriotic fervor and the cynical, bitter angry despair and pity for a doomed generation. This is seen in Sassoon and Owen. In the book of poetry by Brooke and Grenfell there is a romantic conception of the war. They portray war as a fulfilling and heroic experience which makes Brooke t be viewed as a civilian poet since he died before the major campaign he was supposed to take part in. The Victorian poets wrote of war like it was something splendid and ennobling and they actually did not know anything about it. The Georgian poets on the other hand knew everything and they reported everything leaving out nothing. The poetries of Owen and Sassoon showed the realities of war. Sassoon started to sense the truth about the soldiers as the war deepened. And he recorded the death and suffering of soldiers daily. Sassoon started writing bitter satirical poems. This was because he was reacting to the reflective psychological gap that separated the Home front, the civilians from the fighting troops. The soldiers felt a better bond between each other than with the civilians. Sassoon also expressed the feeling of alienation from women as he wrote; “and cackle at the snow, while prancing ranks of harlots shrill the chorus, drunk with din”. The soldiers felt separated from the women who were fixed in civilian ignorance and conservative heroic responses. Sassoon was hostile to the church since they supported the nationalistic demands of the State and sponsored the idea towards war. He says the church has contributed to the man change which is death and mutilitation by encouraging recruitment. Sassoon was sent to a mental hospital after he became so infuriated by the pro longing of the war and he published a protest against the war in the press. This is where he met his great friend Wilfred Owen. Owens poetry was mainly focused on the suffering and pity given to those who suffered in the middle of the Western Front horror. He shows how war destroys youths as a sacrificial rite. The sources of mutilitation and deaths dominate his poetry. He portrays war as a grim religious ritual that demand the sacrifice of its enthusiasts in which is involved as a priest and a victim. Recent works on the history of psychiatry focuses on the history of institutions, ideas and the profession itself but tends to ignore people who need it more. The neglected group especially the females. According to David Ingleby; it is a historiography; “like the histories of colonial wars: it tells us more about the relations between the imperial powers than about the ‘third world’ of the mental patients themselves.” Elaine Showalter focuses on the neglected group through her book The Female Malady. The Female Malady has received muddled up reviews but 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. She mainly focuses on the treatment and not the profession. There were new codes of respectable behavior that were brought that restricted the freedom of women. A middle class woman’ family depended on the wife who was not supposed to work beyond the home. The Victorian Medical science reinforced these codes. The women were supposed to be fully submissive, fully relied on their husbands as their protector and provider and their main work was to be mothers and wives to men. With this the women could not voice out their problems, their freedom of expression was no longer in existence. They could not even be allowed to own any property or even be educated. Those women who tried to oppose with the codes of behaviors in any way or voiced out their cries they were declared ‘mad’. A woman was naturally and typically supposed to be loyal and submissive with no questions asked. The ‘women insanity is mainly blamed on the restricted intellectual and social lives that the middle class women were forced to live in. The Victorian society viewed sexuality as what defined a woman’s quality(Showalte 76). 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. Doctors at that time viewed women as easy targets of mental instability and their way of protection involved regulating her cycles and sexuality. Advice to delay the menstruation in girls was provided and also regulations of women minds by regulating the women’s bodies. The practice of clitoridectomy was used as a cure for female insanity even for cases of irregular tempers. Elaine explains that procedure insisted on a belief which hindered female sexuality to reproduction and not as an elimination of female sexual pleasure 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 influenced by the questions of sexuality and gender. Elaine has tried to show the portrait of the contribution of psychiatry to the wrongs of women. Citations 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. 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