Septimus In The Cold War

Unlike Clarissa, Septimus’s signs were more obvious since he was a veteran of The Great War. The numerous scenes Septimus involving him seemed to make him feel overwhelmed due to the dangers and horrors he is putting himself towards to particularly when his close friend, Evan was killed. This feeling was evidenced by Septimus appearing to be have hallucinations as a direct effect of the war: “For God’s sake don’t come!’ Septimus cried out…But the branches departed. A man in grey was actually walking toward them. It was Evans! But no mud was on him; no wounds; he was not changed. I must tell the whole world, Septimus cried” (Woolf 70). This show that Evan must be very close to Septimus otherwise Septimus wouldn’t evoke such a vivid portrait of Evan. Psychological trauma comes into play because Septimus accepts his hallucinating to be reality rather than fantasy. Septimus’s lack of deciphering what’s reality and fantasy is a glaring symptom that Septimus is clearly traumatized from his participation in the war. …show more content…
It also seems that Clarissa and Septimus always relived these very memories that left them traumatized and yet they keep replaying these memories. As a result, the struggle to forget and move on from the past is what keeping Clarrisa and Septimus from recovering. According to Judith Herman’s Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence – From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror, a psychiatrist named Eric Lister conducted an experiment on Vietnam War veterans and the results were quite similar to Septimus: “Long after the danger is past, traumatized people relive the event as though it were continually recurring in the present. They cannot resume the normal course of their lives, for the trauma repeatedly interrupts…The traumatic moment becomes encoded in an abnormal form of memory” (Herman