This year I co-hosted our Armistice Day event again. Here are my comments…
I recently read a quote from a book about Shell Shock where the author describes World War I as “a war on the…scale…no one had ever seen…the varying degrees of metal breakdown among soldiers or experienced it in such massive numbers.”
What was called Shell Shock during World War I is now called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The language we use to describe the horrors of war have become needlessly complex and take away from the severity of it. Think about how many people use the phrase “PTSD” rather frivolously. I’m not a vet, but I have been through significant, life changing traumas that make me very resentful towards people who use the term in a superficial manner. I hear this criticism from our veteran students as well.
There is a George Carlin clip from the early 1990s that is frequently shared online where he talks about the de-evolution of language and uses the example of Shell Shock. What was Shell Shock in World War I becomes increasingly complex and less declarative language that ends up meaning something that is vague and not direct.
The top comment on that clip focuses on Carlin noting that the phrase Shell Shock “sounds like the guns themselves.” I think about that a lot too.
Something those of you in the audience that have been my students can attest to is that I am constantly telling students to be more declarative. Narrow the scope of your argument. Use precise language. Shell Shock is precise. How we talk about this issue in modern times is not.
During the Modernist era, war, particularly in the Intermodern period between the world wars, was constantly on the minds of writers. Beyond war, Modernism also focuses on how individuals can become deathly alienated from society. One of the best works of literature during this period that describes the horrors of shell shock is Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway.
The co-protagonist, Septimus Smith, has horrible nightmares, when he can even sleep at all, and feels a deep disconnection from those around him including his wife. He feels alienated from society and after hearing a car motor backfire, shows how shell shock robs someone of their ability to properly process themselves and those around them.
Reading from Mrs. Dalloway