The Impossible Knife Of Memory Essay

The Impossible Knife of Memory was too pedestrian for a college-level course. Laurie Halse Anderson, should have focused more on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and how it affects families and friends both in the military and those who have experienced domestic violence. Firstly, PTSD in Merriam-Webster Medical Dictionary defines it as a psychological reaction occurring after experiencing stressful occurrences (i.e. martial combat), we have our first clear glimpse of what caused Andy Kincain's PTSD – main character’s father- as we flashback to the war in the middle east, the first memory we realize is with Andy being blown up in a Humvee “‘I swim through the smoke. Private Stolzfuss still sits behind the wheel. I wipe the blood off her face to find her mouth, make her breathe. She doesn’t have a mouth. She doesn’t have a face anymore’” (Anderson 61). And how this kept him from living a normal life once he left the military. For example, how he avoided leaving town when his army buddy Roy asked him to come to the Adirondacks, to Andy represented the wilds of another country like snipers hiding …show more content…
Andy’s PTSD has fully begun to affect everyone around them when Hayley is telling Finn about Trish making it as painless as possible, avoiding the bad only to return home and experience her own silent Hell. Hayley states “’She threw an ashtray at him and he ducked and it exploded into an ice storm of glass… finding her passed out on the couch with a stranger both of them missing clothes… the sound of the door slamming the last time she left…’” (Anderson 254-255), to Hayley this was a betrayal by someone she cared for and trusted. The way Trish departed Hayley cared for her father keeping his mind from embarking in the past while keeping herself in