As we are to begin our second response paper today and certainly by the time we return from Thanksgiving Break, I would like for you to compose a brief outline for this second paper before beginning to engage the writing fully.
Please follow these guidelines as you build out your thesis, outline, and the like...
- Select and choose at least two textual examples, i.e. passage excerpts of length preferably, in which our narrator Paul had suffered a traumatic experience, in your informed opinion of course...
- Analyze these events, highlighting the key language employed by the narrator to describe his external and, most importantly, his internal setting of tumultuous emotions. Can you explain how his physical stressors contribute to and only further his emotional stress? Can you detail how the opposite is true as well?
- Once having selected your passages, note that they can be either lived experiences, reactionary events, or even incidents from his past. I would highly recommend that you choose two passages which span the length of the novel... in other words, avoid using solely one chapter to build your argument. Tracing the development of his trauma will only help bolster a deeper analysis of your argument whilst proving the atrocious nature of trauma caused by war.
- Lastly, in each of your first two body paragraphs, use secondary source material that will help prove that these events are indeed indicative, symptomatic, and evident of the trauma soldiers, especially those who fought in WWI, underwent... and in many cases still endure to this day.
- Analyze Paul's various coping mechanisms, both physical and psychological... they are various and dynamic. Compare and contrast his methods to those of his comrades and/or to the Russian POWs.
- Here, include a mention of how Paul "looks toward to the future" after the war... That is, what are his promises to himself as a means of accepting, overcoming, or even regressing into his various states of trauma and emotional turmoil.
- In the conclusion, be sure to tie-in, connect, and link, at least one character example from either Robinson's "Twelve Days" or Vonnegut's "Great Day" as a means of showing additional PTSD and the "healthy" or "unhealthy" methods of coping which your selected secondary character employs in their internal battle with themselves.
Here are some secondary sources which you may find beneficial to your paper...
- https://www.va.gov/opa/pressrel/pressrelease.cfm?id=2951
- https://www.mentalhealth.va.gov/mentalhealth/suicide_prevention/data.asp
- https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/08/us/suicide-rate-among-veterans-has-risen-sharply-since-2001.html
- http://dk-media.s3.amazonaws.com/AA/AT/gambillingonjustice-com/downloads/285078/Article_1_-_By_MAJ_Tiffany_M._Chapman.pdf
- https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11065-012-9188-z
Thesis: Erich Maria Remarque’s novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, displays how war imposes itself on the identity of young soldiers and furthermore makes them dependent on war experiences (in a nature analogous to an addictive drug?)(that leave them unfit for life outside of the battlefield?).
ReplyDeleteBody:
1. Using evidence from the early chapters, I will show how the soldiers are young boys and have little sense of identity. I will draw from developmental psychology which shows that teenagers and young adults are highly impressionable.
2. Using quotations from after an assault (repeating forced images instead of memories) I will draw connections to Paul's narration to PTSD - also citing earlier readings in the class about PTSD.
3. Finally, I will compare the language used to describe comrades and war + outbursts of joy with the household experiences and ‘Grey Chapters’ in the latter half of the book to show how these extreme experiences desensitize the narrator to normal joys.