War Trauma, Hemingway, and The Sun Also Rises

War Trauma is a type of damage to the psyche that occurs after traumatic events during a war. It also leads to post traumatic stress disorder. Damage may involve physical damages inside the brain which changes the response to future stress. Psychological trauma can lead to long term negative effects, according to health professionals.

Symptoms of Trauma: After a traumatic experience a person can re-experience the trauma mentally and physically. Making a person avoid anything that may relate to that experience.This can be uncomfortable and painful. This could lead to alcohol use to try to get rid or escape from all of those feelings. A person might get angry at random and frequent situations for no real reasons.This anger can be started by picture, images, or flashbacks that may haunt this person.

In The Sun Also Rises, Jake used alcohol to relieve stress from World War 1. He avoided getting into close relationships. He did not want to lose anybody that he might have gotten close with like he might have in the war.

Ernest Hemingway went to war after he graduated from high school. Ernest Hemingway said to one of his friends after his time in war,"There was one of those big noises you sometimes hear at the front. I died then. I felt my soul or something coming right out of my body." An explosion went off and the strap metal went through a friendly soldier's legs and Ernest also got hurt pretty badly, but he didn't care about his own safety so he helped the man out in his time of need and he got a medal for his courage.

When he came back from the war he was 19 years old. But he matured a lot and started thinking a lot about his future. There was a lot of pressure on him to start working or pursuing his education. He received $1000 for insurance for his war wounds which helped him avoid working for a year. Later on in his life when he became a writer his writing reflected his inner thoughts and feelings of world war 1 and the traumatic effects that occurred to him at the time.





Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_trauma
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I
http://www.lostgeneration.com/ww1.htm

By Vrej and Vahan