The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Effects of Trauma on the Narrative Structures of Across the River and Into the Trees and The Naked and the Dead: Difference between revisions

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+fiction. Authors, during the period following the Civil War, understood that capturing the tension of war trauma in a narrative structure requires a move beyond romantic dialogue or realistic narrative summary.
+American narratives surrounding the Great War or World War I subsequently reflect an increasing awareness of trauma and the abject nature of the experience of war on the structure of the narrative, while representing the possibility of ordering the traumatic chaos of war. World War I, described by H.G. Wells as the “war to end all wars,” appears initially in the American landscape almost as an afterthought. President Woodrow Wilson’s reluctance to engage America in the European conflict contributes to an early American sense of distance with the conflict. As America enters the war in April of , however, an era of conscription and service weaves through the American consciousness. The conscripted masses of American soldiers face a war-torn landscape unlike any experienced before in war, resplendent with men fighting from muddy trenches, attacking from armored tanks, bombing from war planes, and gassing from canons. The horror of war surrounding the newly minted American soldiers introduces a new understanding and mental chaos into the psyches of soldiers. Jennifer Keene asserts that few combatants directly confronted the irrationality of the war landscape. Instead, Keene argues, these men remained adamant in believing in order that could be discerned in the chaos of frontline life (). The narratives of the period reference this attempt at projecting order into and onto the chaotic structure and experience of the traumas of war. The fictions of the Great War and after reflect an increasing desire to witness and project some semblance of order within the chaos of war, as seen in the content and structure of the narratives.