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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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what good would they do? You could tell a thousand and they would not prevent war"{{sfn|Hemingway|1876|p=255}}. In this passage, Cantwell’s recollection centers on engaging the abject inconceivability of war and trauma represented by the animals eating the soldier’s corpse. Further, the passage also reveals a tension with subsequent attempt to normalize the unbearable condition of witnessing this atrocious act of war. The passage from ''ARIT'' illustrates the narrative shifts constructed in relation to tension appearing when attempting to engage the abject experience of the traumatic events of modernity in the structure of a narrative. In this passage, as in the passage from ''NAD'', Hemingway represents the experience of trauma in war in the content of the narrative and, also, attempts to embody the abject experience of war trauma in the structuring of the narrative—a structure that gives voice to the abjective more than the subjective or the objective.
what good would they do? You could tell a thousand and they would not prevent war."{{sfn|Hemingway|1876|p=255}} In this passage, Cantwell’s recollection centers on engaging the abject inconceivability of war and trauma represented by the animals eating the soldier’s corpse. Further, the passage also reveals a tension with subsequent attempt to normalize the unbearable condition of witnessing this atrocious act of war. The passage from ''ARIT'' illustrates the narrative shifts constructed in relation to tension appearing when attempting to engage the abject experience of the traumatic events of modernity in the structure of a narrative. In this passage, as in the passage from ''NAD'', Hemingway represents the experience of trauma in war in the content of the narrative and, also, attempts to embody the abject experience of war trauma in the structuring of the narrative—a structure that gives voice to the abjective more than the subjective or the objective.


Mailer’s focus on the traumas of war and experience reflects and creates in the narrative the testimony of questioning and confusion of the trauma of war. For Mailer, the narrative presentation of the traumas of war embodies knowledge of the incomprehensibility of the traumatic experience. Thus, as he constructs his structures of fiction, Mailer oscillates between reflecting a testimony based on experience of trauma and creating a fiction drawn from the impossibility of understanding the experience of trauma.
Mailer’s focus on the traumas of war and experience reflects and creates in the narrative the testimony of questioning and confusion of the trauma of war. For Mailer, the narrative presentation of the traumas of war embodies knowledge of the incomprehensibility of the traumatic experience. Thus, as he constructs his structures of fiction, Mailer oscillates between reflecting a testimony based on experience of trauma and creating a fiction drawn from the impossibility of understanding the experience of trauma.
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