Having found our conversations this term in ASTU very interesting, I was excited at the prospect of getting to read my fellow classmates blogs, comparing and contrasting their takes on the work of psychologists William James, Sigmund Freud and Silvan Tomkins along with the literary works of Big Two-Hearted River by Ernest Hemingway and Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Wolf. With the exception of Tomkins, who wrote later in the century, all of this great body of work was done in the context of the early 20th century, a time stained by the horror of World War 1.
Such was the profound effect of the war on the culture at the time that many of my classmates focused their blogs particularly on examining the shift that the war brought on in Europe. Aleksei, very interestingly, described what set WW1 apart from the wars before it as a lack of “politeness,” illustrating a fundamental alteration in the perception of warfare, particularly by those fighting, from a chivalrous endeavour to a frivolous loss of lives. William also explored this change and summed it up nicely through artwork with Monet’s Water Lillies analogizing the bright mentality of Europe before the war and Edvard Munch’s The Scream, though it was painted before the war, coming to “represent what it (Europe) had become.”
Moving from a societal scale change to a more individual response, for the over 3.5 million men discharged from the British Army between 1918 and 1922 the effects of the war on many of their mental states was severe. This change in the psychology of the men that fought was a commonly explored theme across my classmates blogs, particularly post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or shell-shock as it was first described at the time. The early 20th century saw the birth of Freud’s psychoanalysis to join the already growing developments in the field of psychology under the likes of William James. Whilst, as William points to, the analysis of James and Freud is often viewed with a “vs” mentality, pitting the two theories against each other, Tessa flipped this notion in her blog. She argued that explaining James’ analogy of consciousness as a totally continuous stream “played a vital role” (Tessa) in her appreciation of Freud’s understanding of PTSD. This is particularly pertinent to the apparent realness of PTSD symptoms as the brain experiences it in real time as part of their stream of consciousness and thus the experiencer understands it as a real threat rather than contextualizing it as an internal memory related to a past event.
The experience of an individual suffering PTSD and the realities in which they live formed defining parts of both Hemingway and Wolf’s respective works. A number of the blogs focused on examining the differences between the portrayal of PTSD in the characters of the two novels. Tracy points to how Big Two-Hearted River is a very individual focused story where “the reader’s perspective is limited by Nick’s consciousness” placing the focus onto the “personal struggles of memory.” In contrast, Mrs Dalloway instead explores the PTSD condition of Septimus Warren Smith through “multiple perspectives,” expressing clearly the loss of the older generation in being capable of understanding his condition that ultimately leads to his death. Kirveena focuses also on the different narrative styles of Hemingway and Wolf, particularly Hemingway’s use of Iceberg Theory whereby the true meaning of the work is submerged below the manifest story of Nick going on a fishing trip. This means the reader has to work to get a deeper understanding of Nick’s mental state whereas “Septimus openly talks about these repetitive compulsions” (Kirveena) and the work of the reader is instead shifted to navigating the relations between different characters inner consciousness. It was very thought provoking to read Etana’s blog which went into considerable detail examining Hemingway’s Iceberg Theory and its relevance not only as a literary tool but, as most literary tools are, its concurrent relevance to our everyday lives. She ended her blog beautifully with the thought that “just as literary works require critical analysis, life often asks us to read beyond the lines as well” (Etana). It is that nuanced take on the reality of people’s lives that I believe makes literature so valuable to explore and has made ASTU so interesting this term. I look forward to getting to explore a whole variety of new books through my own blogs over the coming months.