PTSD In Scholar Showalter's Dulce Et Decorum Est

Tragedy follows all those who partake in fighting their fellow man and soldiers during World War 1 were no exception. World War 1 was vicious on an unprecedented level, never before seen in battle because of the warfare. In the Victorian era, in Great Britain, citizens were not used to the terror experienced by nerve gas, tanks, and automatic weapons. They found it near impossible to describe the horrors faced by the many brave men and women who served for their country because they lacked the language to do so. This caused a build up of trauma in numbers never before seen in previous wars. Author Wilfred Owen tried to describe the events that took place in, and as a result of, World War 1 in his poems Dulce et Decorum Est and Disabled. Scholar

One of the strong points of the article is the ability to bring a new sense of emotion and depth of such a complex subject. Before this article many people would have considered ‘shell shock’ to be another term for PTSD. Despite the similarities these two mental illnesses are very different. In a sense ‘shell shock’ can kind of go under the overarching umbrella of PTSD and yet PTSD is not ‘shell shock’. Showatler’s arguments throughout the article discussed that there was a new sense of nationalism during the Victorian era and the there were societal repercussions from the strict social images that began to unravel during times of stress, both mentally and physically. Showatler mentioned in her article how Sassoon delt with his ‘shell shock’, “Although he did not seem to have any unusual physical or behavioral symptoms, the stresses and concerns that motivated Sassoon to publish his open letter of protest against the war could easily be seen as part of the larger syndrome of shell shock to which army doctors and administrators had gradually become accustomed” (Showalter). The British Empire could not allow its citizens to start to express displeasure in its ranks with being in a war they no longer deemed important. Those ideals could have changed the tide of war and British involvement.

“He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark,/And shivered in his ghastly suit of grey,/Legless, sewn short at elbow” (Disabled 1-3). As the man in the wheelchair continuously recognizes the changes not having legs create in his life he reminisces on a time in his life when he did have legs. “In the old times, before he threw away his knees./Now he will never feel again how slim/Girls' waists are, or how warm their subtle hands,/All of them touch him like some queer disease” (Disabled 10-3). In these lines the speaker continues to talk about the soldier in the wheelchair as an all-knowing third party. The speaker beings to dissect the soldier’s past and how women considered him desirable when he had legs. Now, without legs, they hesitate to touch him. It is to the extent that when they do touch him it’s almost like they are worried they will catch something from him. The almost sudden shift and shocking change from losing one’s legs in an instant, coupled with a instant change in how people treat you for something you can not control is heart wrenching. The speaker then goes into further detail talking about how terribly the soldier, and soldiers in these sort of hospitals, are