Trauma In Fallen Angels By Walter Dean Myers

According to the National Center for PTSD, 15 out of every 100 Vietnam War Veterans was diagnosed with PTSD. In the Vietnam War many of the soldiers had to deal with trauma from the things that they had witnessed. The signs of trauma are great, and they affected the soldiers greatly. It is not always evident at first, but can show up in the later years. War is making Americans go crazy. In Walter Dean Myers’ novel, Fallen Angels, a young man deals with emotional trauma as he adjusts to the realities of war, which applies a sense of realism to the novel.

In a study that was done in Croatia, they found a correlation between witnessing traumatic experiences and the development of PTSD. “High levels of mental distress, depression, anxiety and post-traumatic

Perry having symptoms of traumatic experiences. Perry is no longer himself, he feels as if he is merely walking around and waiting for death at this point in war. “Suddenly I wasn’t there. There was somebody running in my boots, but it wasn’t me. The legs moved mechanically, the weapon stayed in front of the body.I could almost see myself running. I could almost feel myself running, but it wasn’t me running” (Myers 258). In this quote R. Perry is no longer in himself, rather he is literally beside himself. He isn’t physically aware of who he is and is only going through the motions of war. Perry is experiencing signs of a mental state described in the article and proved in the experiment that was conducted by Dr. Munjiza Ph.D and others. The novel by Walter Dean Myers continues in the following paragraph with, “It was a body moving through a nightmare, a nightmare in which everything knew everything, where the ground pushed your feet away and the vines clutched at your feet while the trees chortled and shook with silent laughter” (Myers 258). In this quote Richie is understanding the pressures of war, and he is collapsing from it. The pressures are from the battles that he has already fought in the war, and he is currently in the middle of waiting for the next battle to

Perry doesn’t have all of these symptoms, and the ones that he does have are not that prominent. “ Consequently, symptoms that were incorporated into the definition of posttraumatic stress disorder at a later time, such as guilt about surviving, avoidance of activities, and the experience of events triggering the recall of trauma, were not included in the symptom inventory” (Laufer et al 1). This quote from the article relates to Perry because he has some symptoms of PTSD because he has the ability to recall earlier experiences. Perry also discludes himself with another character named PeeWee on a regular basis throughout the story. These are only a few of the main examples of how richie Perry experiences some symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the novel Fallen Angels by Walter Dean