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."