[In honor of Veterans’
Day, a series on cultural and historical engagements with this important
American community. Please share your suggestions for veterans’ texts and
contexts for the crowd-sourced weekend post!]
On the powerful story that embodies, but also challenges, one of the most
widely understood aspects of veterans’ experiences.
Some of the more challenging kinds of topics to AmericanStudy are those for
which we already have a pretty good collective understanding—not ones where
there are widely shared but inaccurate narratives, but rather ones where we seem, by and large, to get it
right. In that case, after all, it would be fair to ask what a public scholar
has to add to the conversation. One such collectively shared understanding, it
seems to me, has to do with the widespread prevalence of PTSD and similar
illnesses and conditions among veterans—we’ve been talking collectively about
related questions and issues since at least World War I and “shell shock,” and have since Vietnam become
increasingly aware of just how significant an issue this illness
comprises for all of our men and
women who return home from wartime military service.
Just because we’re generally aware of an issue, though, doesn’t mean that
we’re fully engaged with its histories and stories, with questions like how it
impacts individuals and communities. There are lots of ways to increase that
kind of engagement, but I know of few that are more effective than encountering
works of art that can humanize these broader historical issues; and thus I can
think of few more salient AmericanStudies efforts than highlighting such works
of art. When it comes to PTSD and war veterans, I don’t know of any artistic
work that more concisely and powerfully captures those histories than Louise Erdrich’s short story “The Red Convertible” (1984, first on its own and then as part of her wonderful short
story cycle Love Medicine).
Through her depiction of two brothers, one (Henry Lamartine Jr.) a Vietnam vet
dealing with PTSD and the other (Lyman Lamartine) narrating both Henry’s story
and its effects on his family and community, Erdrich brings veterans’ PTSD home
in literal, metaphorical, tragic, and deeply affecting ways.
If reading Erdrich’s story thus helps us embody this broader historical
issue, it also definitely challenges, or at least complicates, our widely
shared understanding of that issue. For one thing, the Lamartine brothers, like
most of Erdrich’s characters and Erdrich herself, are part of the Ojibwe Chippewa (Native American) tribe and community, and her story thus forces us to grapple with the hugely
disproportianate percentage of Native Americans who have served in our
country’s wars (and thus been affected
by issues such as PTSD). And as a result, Erdrich’s story also reminds us that
PTSD, like any illness and especially any psychological illness, varies widely
and crucially depending on a range of other factors, many connected directly to
the particular community and environment surrounding the affected person. So a
broad understanding of veterans and PTSD, while a good starting point, requires
a good deal more engagement and analysis, and Erdrich’s story can help us carry
that work forward on multiple levels.
Next post tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you think? Other texts
or images you’d share for the weekend post?
No comments:
Post a Comment