ENGA10 LECTURE 06 10/26/2011 6:02:00 AM
WWI shattered American society
Imperialism came in at the same time as consumerism
The model is starting to fail because we aren’t consuming at the
same rate
The economy moves from an industrial model to a financial model
Bodies have less and less connection to your
environment/experiences; it has become a battlefield of public
discourse (marketing – everybody wants you)
We = zombies; increasing sense bodies are decaying
Our bodies are decaying with debt
The novel Mrs. Dalloway is a great depiction of the world after WWI
At least for awhile, WWI shattered myths of technology, progress
and efficiency
o Technology (e.g. weapons) caused the deaths of 20 million
people technology of weapons was not previously
considered
Who is your enemy (Heart of Darkness)
o For soldiers, “enemy” becomes less and less clear because
“enemy” looks just like them
Shell shock: ex-soldiers fall apart post war
o Disassociation: human way to deal with trauma
Septimus Smith: fully disassociated from the war
What trauma victim needs: a witness; someone to listen
Trauma victims have gone from: 1 & 2 to 3
3 what occurs between 1 and 2
Pre-trauma, you can make sense of your experiences
o If something is making you suffer, and you communicate it,
you can give meaning to it
o If you give your suffering meaning, you can integrate it into
your experiences and move on
Shell shock: everything is wiped out but suffering, which becomes
depression
Because you can’t work through the trauma, there is no past,
present, future; only the NOW of eternal suffering (for Septimus, he
can’t work through the trauma of his friend Evans being blown up
so he keeps reliving it)
Mrs. Dalloway keeps repeating that “the war is over”, but it isn’t
(referring to the amount of mental trauma that goes unchecked;
the shattered minds of soldiers)
The novel Mrs. Dalloway is itself a shattered book
o The novel moves around time randomly (i.e. random streams
of consciousness) there is no such thing as time in this
novel except what we impose
History tries to make sense of things, but only in retrospect
Experience is juxtaposition; history is linearity
suffering
past, present,
future
where your
body is, etc.
Linearity
Coherence
Ego
Juxtaposition
Integrity
Body
Experience
Meaning
Suffering
Communication
1
2
3