War Characters & Consciousness in 2 Texts

War Characters & Consciousness in 2 Texts

A University of Melbourne Short Essay Assignment

Under the Freshman Arts IDF subject "From Homer to Hollywood"

Passed with High Distinction (H1)

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By Benjamin L.C.Y., written during Semester 1, 2011

Question 8:

"In Homeric and medieval representations of war characters have little consciousness; while in more recent representations of war characters are weighed down by their self-awareness." 

Critically analyse this claim by choosing two characters we have studied and discuss how the representation of consciousness has changed over time.

  

Tutor: Dr. S Young 

Ben, your essay shows a great amount of consideration of the topic, and your response is excellent. You show an in depth understanding of how the the conscious mind is depicted in your texts, & your depiction of Hecuba's despair and Rivers' trauma is very effective. You have used evidence to good effect throughout & present a very well crafted response. Well done & best wishes for next semester.

H1, 27/30

Introduction

       ‘Little consciousness’ implies that Homeric characters have simplistic minds, while ‘weighed down’ suggests that the self-awareness of recent war characters is acute to the point of distress. Only the latter is true – some war characters in both epochs display great awareness of themselves and their situations. This leads to distress and/or despair as their plight becomes evident.

       Hecuba in Women of Troy (Euripides, 2004) and Rivers in Regeneration (Barker, 2009) are indirect victims of, and witnesses to, the effects of war. Their distress is used to critique wars in each author’s epoch. Both Hecuba and Rivers are represented as characters that are reflective and self-aware, but the distinct nature of their distress critiques their wars in different ways. I will argue that Hecuba’s despair epitomises the plight of the enslaved Trojan women, while the stress Rivers faces subtly reveals the soldiers’ psychiatric trauma and its effects on those tasked with their rehabilitation.

Hecuba

       Although it is unlikely that Euripides intended Women of Troy to criticise the atrocities committed during the invasion of Melos, the barbarity of warfare was sufficiently known to inspire a play criticising war atrocities in general (Mastronarde, 2010). The Melos incident occurred a year before the play was performed in Athens, the invading state (ibid.). When Melos refused to ally with Athens against Sparta during the Peloponnesian War, the Athenian force killed all the men and enslaved the women and children (Thucydides, 431 BC in Lawson, 2010). The enslavement of Melos’ women bears strong parallels with the play and Hecuba’s situation. Hecuba’s consciousness is marked by repeated lamentations about her disempowerment and her inability to reconcile herself with her fate. Her lamentations critique the victorious Greeks’ treatment of the women as a whole, while the embodiment of the women’s plight in the portrayal Hecuba’s despair ensures that the reader/audience is still able forge an empathic connection with an individual character’s suffering while retaining the analogical connection between Hecuba’s situation and that of the other women as a category of victims.

       The connection between Hecuba and the Trojan women is evident from her first speech: “O women of Troy,/ our city burns,/ our warriors are gone.” It illustrates that she is conscious of the women’s general situation as vanquished subjects, while the line “our warriors are gone” parallels the murder of the men of Melos. The parallel with Melos is strengthened when Hecuba ponders her slavery: “Who’ll own me now?/ Who’ll order me?/ An old woman, a slave, all tears,”. This line reflects an introspective despair at her fate as another’s subservient possession – where ‘now’, ‘me’ and ‘tears’ at the end of each line forms an almost paratactic reiteration of her misery. Her fears are confirmed when the Greek herald Talthybius declares, “You’ve been allocated”, a verb that reflects their helplessness under Greek subjugation and implies that they are distributable commodities.

       The portrayal of Hecuba’s consciousness impacts the audience because it vacillates between rage and grief in a realistic fashion as she grapples with the situation. Her anger is first directed to her new slave master, Odysseus, in a contemptuous manner: “I spit on him, deceiver, monster, liar”. This contempt is expressed through the onomatopoeic syllable ‘spit’, while the assonance of ‘–ver’, ‘-ster’, and ‘-ar’ in “deceiver, monster, liar” is reminiscent of a growl. In anger she tries to make sense of her plight by blaming Helen: “a slave… for her sake,/ that woman’s sake,/ that I be brought to this!”, yet morphs reverts into despair as the Greeks wheel her daughter, Andromache, offstage on a cart with loot while her infant grandson, Astyanax, is taken for execution. Hecuba cries “child, child of my child of tears,/ they’re robbing us”. In light of the preceding stage directions where Andromache is wheeled offstage on a cart with war loot, Andromache has been implicitly compared and reified into pillage, while Hecuba’s utter helplessness to resist the Greeks’ indignant robbery of her family members vividly illustrates her helplessness. Despairing, Hecuba cries: ”What can I do?/ Beat head, beat breast, that’s all./ Oee! Troy! Child!” This futile gesture highlights Hecuba’s psychological distress as she moves from contempt to blame and, finally, despairs. Such a multifaceted portrayal of loss gives Hecuba’s consciousness a rich and realistic rendering that would strike an empathic chord with the audience. Through empathising with Hecuba, Euripides’ Athenian audience might see their own sins against Melos.

Rivers

       In contrast, Rivers’ burden focuses on the medical theme of psychiatric illness rather than outright subjugation and oppression. The demands of treating his patients eventually result in his own breakdown as their issues take a toll on his own health. During WW1, soldiers’ psychiatric afflictions were called ‘war neurosis’, an umbrella term for mental afflictions arising from war (Bogacz, 1989). Trench warfare exposed frontline infantrymen to constant danger and violence and was likely to turn them into “psychiatric casualties” (Jones, 2006). This coheres with Rivers description of breakdown as a sort of mental ‘erosion’ caused by “months of stress in a situation where you can’t get away from it”. For example, a patient, Prior, provides an account of trench warfare during World War One “when the [enemy’s] bombardment had gone on for seventy hours, and they’d stood-to 5 times expecting a German counter-attack.” The prolonged danger is also unpredictable – he describes two men frying bacon just moments before a shell exploded, but now there was “no sign” of their cooking activity, “and not much of Sawdon or Towers either, or not much that was recognisable” except a gruesome eyeball. With a shaking hand, Prior said, “What am I supposed to do with this gob-stopper?” and goes into shock.

       They image of the ‘gob-stopper’ eyeball can be seen as a metonym for this scene. Prior has seen and experienced the constant danger and uncertainty of the front, and how men die with little trace except a gruesome reminder of their presence. The ‘residual’ image of the scene has etched itself in to Prior’s mind as the gob-stopper, and eventually entrenches itself in Rivers’ as well. After listening to Prior’s recount of the scene, Rivers retires to his quarters and sees himself in the mirror. Upon inspecting his blood-shot eye, his recalls Prior’s question, “What am I supposed to do with this gob-stopper?” Rivers has thus ‘seen’ and internalised a gruesome image of war, and the pressure of tending to his patients ironically leads to his own breakdown. Rivers found that he manifested “the familiar symptoms” seen in his patients and realises his psychosomatic symptoms indicate that he has ‘war neurosis’. The ceaseless, stressful task of treating so many patients at Craiglockhart hospital matches Rivers’ above description of breakdown, and the doctor has ironically contracted the same war neurosis he is attempting to cure in others. Compared to Hecuba, the representation of Rivers consciousness is more complex. There is an almost paratactical relation between the antecedent (the stress of treating patients) and consequent (Rivers ‘war neurosis’), with Rivers description of breakdown as “erosion” offering the faintest of hints linking the two.

Conclusion

       In conclusion, I have argued that the representation of these war characters is fraught with despair and distress as characters obtain greater self-awareness against the backdrop of war. Hecuba’s laments display great anguish as she moves from contempt to blame and, finally, despair. By analogy, the audience can categorically extrapolate her suffering to that of the women in general – an analogy that may be especially striking for Euripides’ Athenian audience. In Rivers’ case, the critique of WW1 is first conducted through gruesome Prior’s recollection of WW1 followed by an elaboration of its effects on Rivers. The image of the “gob-stopper” eyeball haunts Rivers and becomes a device that tells readers how his patients’ issues have made an impression on him. Rivers’ self-awareness is only evident when readers paratactically link his definition of a mental breakdown, the “gob-stopper”, and his own war neurosis. As with Hecuba, Rivers is represented as a character with a high degree of self-awareness and becomes an indirect victim of a war beyond his control.

References

Barker, P. Regeneration. Australia: Penguin Group, 2009.

Bogacz, T. “War Neurosis and Cultural Change in England, 1914-22: The Work of the War Office Committee of Enquiry into ‘Shell-Shock’”. Journal of Contemporary History. Vol. 24 (1989): 227-256

Euripides. Women of Troy. London: Nick Hern Books Ltd, 2004.

Jones, E. “The Psychology of Killing: The Combat Experience of British Soldiers during the First World War”. Journal of Contemporary History. Vol. 41 (2006): 229-246

Mastronarde, D.J. The Art of Euripides. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War. Retrieved 12^th May 2011, from <http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/melian.htm>. Last edited 1 February 2010 by Lawson R.C., Mount Holyoke College.