Shell-shock in death of a hero
A study in the light of psychoanalytical theories
Keywords:
neurosis, psychoanalysis, soldier, trauma, warAbstract
This paper investigates the psychological trauma precipitated by war in Death of a Hero, a semi-autobiographical novel by Richard Aldington, the veteran who served as a soldier in World War I. So, the writer himself witnessed the appalling horrors of war and turned them into a novel. This reveals how the war horrors shatter the sensitive artist psychologically and drive him to commit suicide. Although this novel departs from historical details in the protagonist’s tragic end, it offers a pathetic description of the writer’s agonies which transgresses its setting; i.e., England World War I, and presents a Mankind’s dilemma everywhere. As a narrative, this novel pauses upon the hero’s psychological sufferings in the midst of a fragmented family which represents the British dissolute society at that time, and shows their effects in developing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder later on. That society was akin to another wasteland. The paper adopts a psychoanalytic approach as it attempts to penetrate into the hero’s traumatic experiences. Hence emerges the significance of such a psychoanalytic approach.
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