End of Course

This course was difficult because a lot of the material was very depressing.  I was most interested in studying veterans and Holocaust survivors in relation to trauma.  Possibly this is because we went to the museums for field trips.  The Military Museum was great because it created a feeling of actually experiencing the war.

I did a lot of research on the Holocaust for my paper, which added a lot to my knowledge gained from this course.  I actively read all reading assignments and tried to engage with what the author was saying, and by keeping an open mind I was able to see things from another point of view.

My performance in this course was O.K.  I was sick at the beginning of the course, and I've been having a rough time here lately and the depressing content of the course did not help at all.  I really had a hard time getting all of the work done, and I think a lot of it had to do with how I've been feeling.  The content of the course was very interesting, though, and I learned a lot and am glad to have taken the course.

"Let go of the past and go for the future.

Go confidently in the direction of your

dreams.  Live the life you imagined."

-Henry David Thoreau

I was thinking about how the word "dreams" refers to what happens in our minds while we're asleep, and then thought how the word "dream" also describes our desires, wishes, ideal realities...   Caruth writes about the ideas of both Freud and Lacan regarding dreams and relates the idea that sleeping and dreams are a way to escape the unbearable moments in reality.  Our dreams, meaning our wishes/goals, are always forward-thinking.  The above quote advises you to move forward and focus on the future.  Dreams, then, are also a way of escaping reality while awake, by thinking about and working toward future goals that are not a reality in the present.  Dreams sort of "turn away" from the past, because they are a way of creating a false reality, which often ignores current problems.  Dreaming can be a way to try to escape from the effects of a traumatic event.  It can even be seen as the time-gap between the traumatic experience and the ability of the mind to process what has happened.

  This is a newscast about the U.S. Airways plane that landed in the Hudson River shortly after leaving LaGuardia airport last week.  When I heard the story, I thought about our class because it deals with a traumatic (near-death) experience, surviving, as well as triggering flashbacks for the people in NYC who saw the plane hovering low to the ground, quickly falling from the sky.  Many people thought that it was another terrorist attack and called 911, which, luckily helped rescue teams arrive at the scene quickly.  The survivors interviewed in this newscast don't seem to be traumatized or scarred by this event, but I think the interview was taken pretty soon after the traumatic event.  I wonder if these people will experience problems in the future because of this traumatic event.  I also think it's great to hear a positive story, where U.S. citizens aren't stupid and violent.  There is so much bad news that I think it shapes how we see the world, and hearing about so many psychos, murderers, rapists, bank robbers, etc. all the time can make the world seem like an ignorant, violent place.

   

These are two works by Martin Mendelsberg, who had a lot of his art up at the Holocaust Museum.  While we were at the museum his works didn't seem very significant to me, but reflecting back it's an interesting, creative way to express a point.  The second picture with the skull made me think about Lessing's article about group thinking, which can be related back to the Nazi party.  It is just so incredible how so many people either acted in favor of the Nazis or remained silent.  The quote that we discussed today in class, about how when they persecuted a certain group I said nothing because it wasn't me, and so on, and when they came to get me, there was no one left to speak.  That just really hit me how we can't just sit around and let these terrible things happen to other people, even if for the sole purpose that you could be next.

I liked how the museum showed several positive things and acts of bravery that happened during the Holocaust.  I never knew about the Bielskis or the "civilization" in the forest.  I wrote down a quote that I liked from Asaela Bielski, who was Tuvia's daughter, I think:

"My father bought my mother a revolver

as a gift, which was for her the symbol of

whatever any young woman wants in a

marriage.  This was for her, the means to

stay alive or to kill herself or to die fighting.

It meant that she would never ever fall into

the hands of the Germans."

I really liked this because it expresses the bravery and fight in these people.  I respect them so much, because they were fighting against so many powerful people.  The attitude that they would rather die fighting than give in is so admirable.

This is a link to a speech given by Elie Wiesel:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_kuKXRLEnY

A few things he said in this speech really stood out to me, and they really apply to our class...

"And now the question is, what does one do with memories?  Any psychiatrist will tell you if you suppress memories, they come back with fury.  We must face them.  Even if we cannot articulate them, we must face them.  And memories are many and varied.  Memories of those who died with weapons in their hands.  And those who died with prayers on their lips.  And let no one say that some were heroes and others martyrs.  In those times, the heroes were martyrs and the martyrs were heroes.  It was heroic for a friend to give his piece of bread to his friend.  It was heroic to go around on shabbat and simply say to his or her friends, "It's shabbat today."  It was heroic to have faith.  It was heroic to be human."

"If we decided to tell the tale, it is because we wanted the world to be a better world.  Just a better world.  And learn.  And remember."

"...But there is something more tragic than that.  When the messenger has delivered the message, and nothing has changed."

"We must become the messengers' messengers."

Regarding the traumatic event called the Holocaust, Elie Wiesel calls for us to listen to the stories, to consider the causes of this time of immense suffering, to remember, and to take action to make changes that make the world a better place.  It is one thing to bear witness, it is another thing to bear witness and take action.  Thankfully, we have the ability to meet people who were in World War II and the Holocaust during our lifetime.  Future generations will not be granted this opportunity, and I think that we need to take advantage of it, and be the "messengers' messengers" by not standing by and letting terrible things happen, and by just being a positive being in this world.

  "There are always too many people who construct their own narratives which are either at a tangent to those constructed by politicians or their agents, or which are totally inconsistent with what the state wants us to believe happened in the past."  When I read these lines in Winter's text, I automatically thought about the JFK assassination.  There are so many conspiracy theories and I'm not sure that we will ever know the truth about what really happened.  This is a great example of history being made by certain people, without allowing memory to be included.

 I think this cartoon shows how our thought regarding psychiatric disorders has evolved over time.  Now PTSD and other mental health issues are being recognized as real and we are finding and improving ways to treat these things.  I think it is ignorant to say that someone should "tough it out" or "suck it up" and that disorders such as PTSD or whatever else are not real.  No one knows what it is like in someone else's head, therefore how can you judge someone else's mind based on what you know (your own)?  It's like comparing apples and oranges.  Writers, like Hemmingway, may not have committed suicide if he had had the treatment available today.  Maybe he wouldn't have written as great of works, but was it worth him living a tormented life that eventually led to his destruction?  I definitely think people are overly sensitive and sometimes think they are depressed when they have a bad day or two, but, then again, who am I to judge?

  This is Tim O'Brien in Vietnam around 1969.  Well, he's cute...  Anyway, I like putting a face to the writing.  In the museum and in other pictures of soldiers I like to look at their eyes to try to see what they might have been thinking about.  They always seem kind of sad, hardened, scared, brave... a ton of mixed emotions.

 I wanted to include this Mobb Deep video because throughout this course I have been thinking about different things that come out of trauma.  I think that a lot of rap music has come out of traumatic circumstances.  I've always thought that the lyrics of this song are brilliant...  "Getting closer to God in a tight situation" is my favorite line.  It also makes me sad though that the guy is 19 and has to live this life.  In some situations, it's basically about survival, kill or be killed.  It's like a war going on that no one really thinks is a war.  I'm not trying to claim that I know-all about ghetto or project living, but I have never understood why it continues to go on like this.  It's most dangerous when kids are 15-19ish because they're old enough to know the reality of the situation but young enough to not think there is any future and to fall into traps of power struggle, respect, and credibility.  Anyway, I've always liked rap music, and thinking about both survival and trauma made me think about it.  Survival as the repetition of traumatic events (Caruth)...  How do you deal with it?

     

I think that it's important to go places like The American Military Museum even though it is hard.  I felt a lot of mixed emotions when I left: sad, proud, unsure, thankful, worried...  I saw a photo of a 17-year-old American soldier from World War II, and realized that I can't even begin to imagine what it would be like to put myself in his shoes at age 23, let alone at 17.  I admire the bravery and strength of all of those who fought, and I tried to imagine how hard it must be to come back from any war and try to resume a "normal" life.  I felt proud of my grandpa, who fought in World War II, and of my uncle, who was in Vietnam.

  And united we stand...

I got to thinking about war a lot, and agree that if we (general public back home) had been more informed about what was going on during WWs I & II and had seen pictures, videos, etc. we wouldn't have been so supportive.  Today war is creating huge divisions within our country, while back then it brought us together.  That sense of unity and patriotism is gone, or at least greatly reduced.  Looking back, though, I assume that most people would agree that we could not have stood aside and let Hitler continue.  So was it worth it even with all of the terrible things that happened?  Do the ends justify the means?  Today we are fighting against terrorism... but I'm not ignorant to other conditions that we found enticing enough to fight for.  Is the war against terrorism?  For oil?  Power?  I'm not as informed as I should be about the current war, but it's difficult when you're not really sure what you're fighting for, and when the media is only telling us half the story.  It's true that we've bombed the wrong places, killed innocent people, and done other unthinkable things.  But these are things that have always happened in war, as terrible as that sounds, and the only difference today is that technology exposes many of these things.  There are no clear answers for me regarding this war.  It's easy to say, "We never should have gotten involved, Bush is just an oil-hungry cowboy who's eager to fight."  I don't agree with Bush on most things, but at the same time he is still the president of my country, and it just seems wrong to not at least give our president that respect.  I just feel like it's another example of group thinking and going with the majority.  Getting into the war in the first place is another example of this.  I'm glad that we didn't not do anything after 9/11... and if we hadn't done anything people would have been mad too.  But how do we fight elusive terrorists?  And what are the "true" reasons why we're fighting this war?  What the hell is really going on over there?  How will we feel about this war years from now?  I agree that peace is better than war, but I think it's ignorant to think that holding up peace signs will shield us against bombs and guns.  Good intentions only go so far.  I don't think that you can reason with someone who holds so tightly to their religious beliefs that they are willing to die and kill for the cause.  You can't argue with religion, because people will not turn their backs on their deeply rooted beliefs just because some people (who aren't a part of your religion, and therefore don't know the "truth") don't want to fight anymore and think it's about time to negotiate.  It's not about peace and war when it comes to religion, the higher power, the greater good.  How do you negotiate with that?  War is terrible and should be avoided, but as long as there are people willing to fight us we would be dumb to disarm ourselves, throw up peace signs and be martyrs for this ideal world of peace...  So, that's my short war rant (lol... I hate online abbreviations like "lol" but it's that group/majority mentality...it got me!)

So speaking of "majority rules"/"group thinking," here's a little cartoon that relates to the Lessing reading.  So get your laugh on.  Just trying to lighten things up a bit...
  This You Tube video is about soldiers being redeployed after suffering from post traumatic stress disorder.  It seems it would take years of therapy to get over seeing the terrible things in war.  I feel like more should be done when soldiers come back but at the same time the stigmas and pride may keep soldiers from seeking help, and there's always the question of funding.  It's overwhelming sometimes when there's such a huge gray area with no straightforward answers or solutions.

  This is a 10-minute biography about Hemingway.  I didn't know anything about him or his life before watching this, and it made me appreciate he and his work a lot more.  I couldn't believe how many times he was married (I think 4 or 5) and how much he'd seen in his lifetime (soldier in WWI, witnessed D-Day landings in WWII, was in Cuba during revolution...).  He also went on African safaris, lived in Paris.  What awesome adventures!  I was excited that both Michigan & Florida were mentioned because I'm from Michigan and (obviously) now in Florida.  Always happy to hear about good ol' Michigan.  It's devastating how many great authors suffer from severe depression.  He lived such an incredible life yet still killed himself.  It breaks my heart to think of the internal pain that he must have suffered through all of his life, and I wish that he had gotten some relief...

Whenever I think about war-related literature, I always think about Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried."  That particular passage made me feel connected to the soldiers because it gave such a clear image of what it might me like in a war situation.  Vonnegut's story reminded me of this.  It would be hard to imagine anyone fighting in a war and not having terrible flashbacks.  War stories is the sharing of traumatic events, which may be therapeutic.  As Caruth suggests, people can connect with one another by relating past trauma, and I think that this is true for was stories as well.

Craig and Egan's analyzing of modern literature and trauma really got me thinking about modern books that I have read a

nd how many traumatic events they contain.  I thought about popular authors like John Grisham, Harlan Coben, or Robert Ludlum.  So many popular authors write about traumatic events.  People are fascinated with trauma, and I wonder what effect this really has on readers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLHU6rEC93g

The link above also has to do with trauma in modern literature.  Patrick McGrath, author of the book Trauma talks about his book and what he thinks trauma is.  His book also has to do with soldiers returning home being treated for post traumatic stress syndrome.

I feel like soldiers returning from war, trying to cope with traumatic events, is a very important topic today.  It will appear in even more literature soon because the current war has made this an important issue in our society once again.  I am very interested to see if any changes will be made to help these men, or if we will continue to do the same thing, by giving them a bit of therapy and then thrusting them back into society, expecting them to be "cured."

The class discussion about how media influences our viewing of and interpretation of trauma was very interesting.  It is very difficult in today's world to determine between fact and fiction because they have become so blurred, and this influences our reaction to traumatic events.  Thinking about and looking back at 9/11, I realize that I didn't really have much of a reaction to the images that I saw on tv because it seemed so unreal.  The image of a man in a suit jumping out of one of the burning buildings is still clear in my mind, and I wonder how these images have affected me as well as our entire nation.  Regarding this, Harries mentions, "On the one hand, Lot's wife becomes an emblem of individual psychic damage in retrospection; on the other, she gives a form to worries about the self's encounter with the larger wreckage of the past" (16).  I believe Harries is saying that retrospection can easily lead to masochism, because it is painful to witness.  Once a person has been through a traumatic event, this event inescapably becomes a part of that person.  In Lubin's text, the two women who share their traumatic experiences seem to have a positive effect by bringing people together as well as healing themselves through an acknowledgement of their pain.  This is how I understood it, anyway.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ced8o50G9kg  (that's the link...haven't figured out how to do the whole video in the blog thing yet)

I've posted Bob Dylan's Blowin in the Wind because the lyrics can be applied to what happens when a person experiences a traumatic event.  Some lyrics:

How many times must a man look up

Before he can see the sky?

Yes, 'n' how many ears must one man have

Before he can hear people cry?

Yes, 'n' how many deaths will it take till he knows

That too many people have died?

The answer my friend, is blowin' in the wind,

The answer is blowin' in the wind.

This made me think about Caruth's talking about Tancred & Clorinda, and how when he injures her the second time he hears her cry out.  Possibly to hear another's cry is to bear witness to that person's trauma/pain, which spreads the feeling of trauma to another, to the listener.  The entire song seems to say that the trauma needs to be acknowledged, and until then it is invisible, or "blowin in the wind", similar to the "latency" discussed by Freud, or the haunting nature of the negative unknown effects that come out of trauma.

I also included a picture of the place where, according to legend, lot's wife turned into a salt pillar...  Hmm..who knows?  Maybe this legend was created by the media...??  :)

I was trying to think about how not fully acknowledging the effects of a traumatic event affects people today in the United States.  I think it's generally accepted that ignoring trauma and trying to suppress it leads to negative behaviors, and, in the U.S., I think that's why a lot of people suffer from addiction to drugs, alcohol, or other negative behaviors.  They're trying to find something to help them deal with a traumatic event that they are unable to deal with on their own because they are not even fully aware of it.  So, I found this kinda cool, kinda creepy addict guy.  If you look at the smoke, it kind of turns into a face at the top, which, obviously, is his lingering traumatized subconscious that haunts him, leading him down the terrible road of addiction.

So, that's it for now.  I tried to explore the ideas discussed in class and expand them to my life and the lives of those around me.  It's interesting to try to find different ways of interpreting and applying these concepts.  Hopefully this is kind of what we're supposed to do!