Trauma is a world-wide known phenomenon that people have to live with all their lives. While trauma is mostly seen in the lives of victims of domestic violence or war veterans, it can take any shape and any level of intensity. In Virginia Woolf’s piece, Mrs. Dalloway and Wilfred Owen’s, “Dulce et Decorum Est” trauma is a consistent notion that is prominent in the characters’ lives. In Woolf’s piece, Septimus Smith is a World War I veteran who suffers from obvious trauma in the form of shellshock. He lives with the aftermath of the war and eventually sees hallucinations of his dead war friend, Evans. A less obvious character in the novel, who lives with his own version of trauma is Peter Walsh; Peter got rejected by Clarissa and lives with
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They see their friends struggle and die right next to them at the battlefield (Owen I. 11-14). Septimus also experiences Evan’s death and (assuming his status in the war as active on the battlegrounds) he saw others die as well. Seeing so much war brutality and death right before their eyes, leads to the massive shock that both, Septimus and the soldiers experience. The grotesque and detailed violence and blood they both saw in their own ways also directly links to the trauma. These similarities exist because trauma has the same underlying rule which basically states that you get to re-live a specific event multiple times because you didn’t have a chance to grasp it in the beginning. This goes all across the board for the soldiers, Septimus, and Peter, and it affects them all separately in their own …show more content…
Another point is that the poem tells the story of several soldiers while Woolf’s novel emphasizes the “main” story of one specific character, Septimus. This exists so that there is a show-case of the different viewpoints of trauma; it shows that everyone goes through it in their own way (i.e. Septimus vs. Peter vs. the soldiers). Continuing with the differences, Woolf makes Septimus a wounded World War I veteran, but makes it as he is seen to have fought honorably for his country. Meanwhile, in “Dulce et Decorum Est” there is a strong presence of an anti-war message in the poem. This is specifically shown at the end of the piece when the speaker states:
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil 's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the
They see their friends struggle and die right next to them at the battlefield (Owen I. 11-14). Septimus also experiences Evan’s death and (assuming his status in the war as active on the battlegrounds) he saw others die as well. Seeing so much war brutality and death right before their eyes, leads to the massive shock that both, Septimus and the soldiers experience. The grotesque and detailed violence and blood they both saw in their own ways also directly links to the trauma. These similarities exist because trauma has the same underlying rule which basically states that you get to re-live a specific event multiple times because you didn’t have a chance to grasp it in the beginning. This goes all across the board for the soldiers, Septimus, and Peter, and it affects them all separately in their own …show more content…
Another point is that the poem tells the story of several soldiers while Woolf’s novel emphasizes the “main” story of one specific character, Septimus. This exists so that there is a show-case of the different viewpoints of trauma; it shows that everyone goes through it in their own way (i.e. Septimus vs. Peter vs. the soldiers). Continuing with the differences, Woolf makes Septimus a wounded World War I veteran, but makes it as he is seen to have fought honorably for his country. Meanwhile, in “Dulce et Decorum Est” there is a strong presence of an anti-war message in the poem. This is specifically shown at the end of the piece when the speaker states:
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil 's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the