Did Ajax and Achilles ever suffer from Post-traumatic stress syndrome?
In this absorbing account, Vietnam veteran and classics scholar Lawrence A Tritle offers an incisive analysis of war and its impact upon the soldier and civilian from the classical age to the present day.
Tritle discusses the links between battlefield experiences that affect the participants and victims of war in every age, drawing examples from sources as diverse as the Iliad, Michael Herr's Dispatches, Thucydides' account of the Pelopenesian Wars, and the Oliver Stone film Platoon. Each instance sheds light on some of the most puzzling phemonena of war and shows how the heroes of epic responded to battle with their own forms of "shellshock," battle-madness and bonding. Tritle examines such issues as:
How can ordinarily decent men can commit acts of extraordinary savagery?
Attitudes toward the "enemy"
The impact of war on waiting wives, lovers and civilian bystanders
Remembering the fallen soldier: from the classic Athenian funeral speech to the Vietnam Wall
How veterans live with physical and psychological injury
This memorable book is for readers who wonder about the meaning and experience of battle, about the impact of war and violence on our culture, and for anyone interested in the culture of ancient Greece.
Book Description: Taylor and Francis(Routledge), 2000. Paperback. Book Condition: BRAND NEW PAPERBACK. 9.213 by 6.142 inches. 1. A Twentieth Century American Odyssey 2. Listening to Theristes 3. Achilles and the Heroic Ideal 4. Clearchus' Story: The Heroic Ideal Transformed 5. Penelope and Waiting Wives and Lovers 6. War, Violence, and the 'Other' 7. The Historiography and Language of Violence 8. Rhetoric, Remembrance and Memory 9. The Visibly Dead: Monuments and Their Meaning 10. The Unanchored Dead: Mental Cases and Walking WoundedThis is a brilliant and moving discussion of the nature of violence in the ancient and modern world and how the traumas experienced affected the survivors.From Melos to My Lai presents an erudite, provocative and moving analysis of the accounts of violence in the literature and history of ancient Greece and in the film literature and veterans' accounts of the Vietnam War. This comparative investigation examines the nature of violence, its impact on society and culture, especially as reflected from the perspective of the survivors. The survivors include not only actual combatants, but those with whom they interact: their comrades, their wives and children, families and society as a whole.From Melos to My Lai provides a unique contribution to the study of the impact of violence on its participants and its audience which combines an examination of the artistic representations of violence and the real-life accounts of those involved in it.
