Whitman and PTSD

After our discussion in class yesterday, I began thinking about Whitman and his connection to post-traumatic stress disorder. “The Artilleryman’s Vision” is ahead of its time in so many ways. Whitman appreciates the social impact of war and he identifies and describes details of PTSD. The soldier in “The Artilleryman’s Vision” exhibits many of the same symptoms that distress soldiers today. In an article on veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, Robert Poole says, “They returned, many of them, showing no visible wounds but utterly transformed by combat—with symptoms of involuntary trembling, irritability, restlessness, depression, nightmares, flashbacks, insomnia, emotional numbness, sensitivity to noise”.

In his review on “Drum Taps”, Huck Gutman argues that in “The Artilleryman’s Vision”, Whitman approaches the war as “purely experiential” rather than as a larger ethical issue and he “reveals a recognition of what today is called post-traumatic stress syndrome”. The contrast of the enormously quiet domestic scene to the chaotic war scene and the clear emotional impact the transition is having on the solider shows that Whitman is sensitive to the psychological effect of war. The tone of the poem encompasses detachment and restrained despair. Words like, “vacant”, “stillness”, “cautiously”, “eager”, and “distant”resonate as the most powerfully precise throughout the poem. Even the last line lacks triumph and seems rather defeated (And bombs bursting in air, and at night the vari-color’d rockets”).

It seems Whitman’s own encounters with post-traumatic stress disorder have been so vivid and influential that he is capable of representing it accurately. The most interesting thing to me is how PTSD has changed since Whitman’s time. One major challenge that soldiers are facing today is how quickly they transition from war to home life (literally, one morning they can be at war and that same night they can be at home, whereas in previous wars soldiers would travel by boat and have weeks or months to transition). Interestingly, “poetry therapy” is gaining acclaim as an outlet for soldiers to find healing. One veteran poet, Larry Winters, has undertones of Whitman in his writing. Winters’s poetry, like Whitman’s, personalizes war stories and explains the contradicting emotions associated with being back at home. “The Artilleryman’s Vision” captures the passion of a recovering solider in a way that continues to resonate into our present war.

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4 Responses to Whitman and PTSD

  1. Anton Vander Zee says:

    This is a great foll0w-up to our discussion in class. It’s interesting to think of Whitman himself as having a kind of PTSD. He remained haunted by the dead and dying he witnessed by the corpse-thousands (to borrow his own stunning turn of phrase). The PBS documentary described his physical ailments: buzzing in the ears, anxiety, insomnia. PTSD not only affects soldiers, but witnesses of war, or any trauma for that matter.

  2. Catherine O'Hare says:

    I found myself imagining Whitman’s PTSD and the PTSD that he watched others experience as we watched the PBS documentary in class. I was reminded of a book I read by Jonathan Shay called “Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character”. It’s a really fascinating approach to the idea of PTSD in antiquity and the epic heroes of that time. I’d like it if Shay took his focus off ancient Greek heroes and did some investigation on Whitman and PTSD – that would be interesting!

  3. Anonymous says:

    Along with post-traumatic stress, Whitman, in his old age and sickness, seems to embody the soldiers he saw during his hospital days. This is taken from the “Preface Note to 2d Annex”:

    “…much like some hard-cased dilapidated grim ancient shell-fish or time-bang’d conch (no legs, utterly non-locomotive) cast up high and dry on the shore-sands, helpless to move anywhere—nothing left but behave myself quiet, and while away the days yet assign’d, and discover if there is anything for the said grim and time bang’d conch to be got at…”

    In the PBS film clip we watched in class, there is a remark Whitman makes about the silence of the hospital rooms. He says that save for the moans and cries coming from 2 or 3 cots, the rest of the wounded were silent. You could see this silence in the montage of faces the film showed. Whitman’s comparison of himself to a “time-bang’d conch” reminds me of these soldiers, and their silence. The Whitman of this Preface, 72 years old, is finally experiencing what those soldiers of his past felt in their cots. He even brings the similarity closer, with the clarification “no legs, utterly non-locomotive”. Many of the men he helped were missing limbs, confined to themselves in a way they probably never knew was possible. Whitman expresses a physical embodiment of these broken and restrained soldiers. As they are lost to their cots, he himself feels “cast up high and dry on the shore-sands—nothing left but behave myself quiet”. This “quiet” that he feels come over him is exactly what the soldiers’ silence was that he noted so many years before.

    It is interesting to think about the way younger Whitman normally embodies and fills himself, and how he now is stranded and time beaten, in his bodily shell. The quiet in this “shell” existence is similar to that in the end of “I Sit and Look Out”. The silence we sometimes see or feel in the poems and experiences of his past, he now feels for himself. I think it is interesting how a man so well versed with human nature saw these soldiers and their silence and took care of them, perhaps not truly understanding their silence and helplessness until much closer to his own death.

  4. Dana Thieringer says:

    Sorry, the above anonymous post was me. I didn’t realize I wasn’t logged in yet. Here it is again:

    Along with post-traumatic stress, Whitman, in his old age and sickness, seems to embody the soldiers he saw during his hospital days. This is taken from the “Preface Note to 2d Annex”:

    “…much like some hard-cased dilapidated grim ancient shell-fish or time-bang’d conch (no legs, utterly non-locomotive) cast up high and dry on the shore-sands, helpless to move anywhere—nothing left but behave myself quiet, and while away the days yet assign’d, and discover if there is anything for the said grim and time bang’d conch to be got at…”

    In the PBS film clip we watched in class, there is a remark Whitman makes about the silence of the hospital rooms. He says that save for the moans and cries coming from 2 or 3 cots, the rest of the wounded were silent. You could see this silence in the montage of faces the film showed. Whitman’s comparison of himself to a “time-bang’d conch” reminds me of these soldiers, and their silence. The Whitman of this Preface, 72 years old, is finally experiencing what those soldiers of his past felt in their cots. He even brings the similarity closer, with the clarification “no legs, utterly non-locomotive”. Many of the men he helped were missing limbs, confined to themselves in a way they probably never knew was possible. Whitman expresses a physical embodiment of these broken and restrained soldiers. As they are lost to their cots, he himself feels “cast up high and dry on the shore-sands—nothing left but behave myself quiet”. This “quiet” that he feels come over him is exactly what the soldiers’ silence was that he noted so many years before.

    It is interesting to think about the way younger Whitman normally embodies and fills himself, and how he now is stranded and time beaten, in his bodily shell. The quiet in this “shell” existence is similar to that in the end of “I Sit and Look Out”. The silence we sometimes see or feel in the poems and experiences of his past, he now feels for himself. I think it is interesting how a man so well versed with human nature saw these soldiers and their silence and took care of them, perhaps not truly understanding their silence and helplessness until much closer to his own death.

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