Enduring Trauma
The Impact of the World Wars in Literature
World War I and World War II are important and devastating times in world history that had far reaching effects and consequences. The most obvious of those consequences would be the physical damages and casualties. Countless lives are cut short during these two wars and hundreds of thousands of homes and infrastructures are destroyed by air raids and bombings. While these physical loses are tragic, the detrimental effects on the psyche of all involved in these two wars can be seen just as vividly through the writing of modernist and postmodernist authors. The distress inflicted by the World Wars also mirrors the sensibilities associated with these two genres. From the alienation effect to violence and social divide, the shell-shocked writers of the early to mid twentieth century had much perspective to give on the aftermath of their experiences.
T.S Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” provides the reader with a glimpse inside the fractured mentality of the British in the early twentieth century. Eliot’s poem was published in 1915, one year after the start of the first World War. With no other war having ever been fought on such a grand scale, tension and uncertainty for the future were common feelings throughout Europe. This same tension and uncertainty can be seen in Prufrock’s questioning tone and fits into the modernist construction. With realizations such as, “And indeed there will be time / To wonder, “Do I dare?” and “Do I dare?” (37–38) and questions like, “And should I then presume? / And how should I begin?” (68–69), Prufrock’s hesitation is revealed. He is static in his personal life and is unsure of which direction he needs to be heading. The same can be said for the English. Having never been involved in a tragic event on such a grand scale, the most common emotion of the people would be doubt that plagued day-to-day life.
While Prufrock gives insight to the feeling of Britain as a whole, Septimus Warren Smith in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway illuminates the effects of World War I through the mind of a veteran. Upon being injured and discharged from the war, Septimus returns home shell shocked and unable to recover mentally from the scars of war. Septimus is described as an aspiring poet possessing many romantic notions before his departure to the battlefields and, once he returns home, is described as having lost those whimsical characteristics entirely. Woolf uses Septimus as an example of war’s capacity to break down the mind and transform a person into someone that is unrecognizable. A link to the modernist conventions in Mrs. Dalloway can be seen through the stream of consciousness approach used by Virginia Woolf. When the story is narrated through Septimus’s point of view, the reader is accosted with vivid descriptions of events and people. His trauma does not allow him to separate his past experiences during the war from the instances he is confronted with in the present. He is no longer physically at war, but his mind cannot comprehend this fact and he has no confidant with which to attempt to relate or help channel these left over feelings from the war.
The second World War would begin in 1939 and would bring many unexpected changes for the British. For the first time, a war of epic proportions was brought to its shores and this domestic war brought the feelings of tension and trepidation to new heights. After enduring months of bombings and air raids, the damage was surveyed and England was all but destroyed. As with World War I, it would take a great deal of time for the psyche of the people to heal. In 1958, a full thirteen years after World War II has ended, Samuel Beckett’s Endgame is published. Despair, ruin, and loneliness: all emotions associated with battle and its aftermath are seen throughout the play. Main characters Hamm and Clov have difficulty reconciling their reasons for once working together and Europe is struggling to see past the horrors that each country has inflicted upon the other during the long periods of hostility. One thing is certain, just as Hamm and Clov see the ghosts of their past lives that remain on the stage, Beckett sees the ghosts left over from World War II and is making a statement that it is time for them to be exorcised. In a scene, Clov contemplates killing a flea and Hamm encourages him. He states that with the death of the flea, perhaps humanity will be able to start over again. This instance seems to bear the message of rebuilding from destruction and death, making life whole again whether it be in a play or in Europe.
