Popular Culture Review
128
13
Hades is planning to make a fortune selling plasma rifles in the Crimea.
14
I am thinking specifically here o f Isaac Rosenberg’s “Break o f Day in the Trenches”
(1916) in which, during bombardment, he meditates on the cosmopolitan sympathies o f a
rat scurrying through the trenches.
Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew
Your cosmopolitan sympathies.
N ow you have touched this English hand
You w ill do the same to a German
Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure
To cross the sleeping green between.
It seems you inwardly grin as you pass
Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes.
Less chanced than you for life.
Bonds to the whims o f murder.
Available at .
There are countless other examples in trench poetry from WWI.
In an article entitled “The Repression o f the War Experience,” which appeared in The
Lancet in February 1918, Rivers articulates his departure from traditional treatment.
Citing several cases. Rivers explains that soldiers are traditionally advised by everyone,
doctors and civilians, to “banish all unpleasant and disturbing thoughts from [their]
mind[s].” The success o f soldiers who managed to restrain their memories and anxieties
during the day was counterbalanced by the nightmares that assailed them, usually o f the
very memories they sought to repress. Rivers instead encouraged shell-shocked soldiers
to articulate their memories and traumatic experiences in order to face and exorcise them.
He also used hypnosis as a way to get patients to reenact their experiences. Confronting
the memories. Rivers believed, was the only way to heal.
16 For the fiill-text article, see “Families endure private war” by Mike Doming, in The
Chicago Tribune, 11/29/2004.
17
For more discussion on current disputes and cases, see “After Death, a Stmggle for
Their Digital Memories” by Ariana Eunjung Cha, in The Washington Post, 2/3/2005.
18
For the full story o f the V A ’s struggle to keep their trauma center open, see “An
Afterwar in W aco” by T. Trent Gegax in Newsweek, January 31, 2005. The story is
available online at . To help
the Waco V A in their stmggle to stay open, visit their online petition at .
Works Cited
Alfred, Lord Tennyson. “The Charge o f the Light Brigade.” 1870. Available at
.
Brooks, Rupert. “The Soldier.” 1915. Available at .
Fforde, Jasper. The Eyre Affair. London: Penguin Books, 2002.
---------- Lost in a Good Book. London: Penguin Books, 2003.