Title
No Separate Peace: A Farewell to Arms as Trauma Narrative
Document Type
Essay
Annotation
Reads Henry’s retelling of his past trauma as a form of “prosthetic thinking,” attempting to make whole his now fragmented body and consciousness. Asserts that Henry’s shell shock, though never explicitly mentioned, causes dissociation with his body, present reality, and emotional awareness, ultimately leading to his inability to control and articulate his present even as he attempts to reconcile it with the past. Includes information on the larger context of America’s response to shell shock, covering contemporary debates on causation, treatment, and evolving social attitudes.
Published in
Shell Shock, Memory, and the Novel in the Wake of World War I
Date
2015
Pages
83-110
COinS
Citation
Dodman, Trevor. “No Separate Peace: A Farewell to Arms as Trauma Narrative.” In Shell Shock, Memory, and the Novel in the Wake of World War I, 83-110. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015.