Humanities Thesis
Traumatic events come in many forms, but whether in the form
of the holocaust or the wars overseas, these events always leave a wake of
people affected by them in different ways and to different extents. However, everyone
deals with this animalistic reaction to trauma in various forms. People who survive traumatic
events are people who can overcome personal discomfort. Survivors are
people who steel themselves against the horrors they face, but sometimes those
horrors cling to these survivors like a wet article of clothing. The survivors who end up living better
lives are the ones who can look into themselves and except their fate, or can
simply shut the suffering in a little box inside of them, in order to get over
the emotional pain.
Holocaust
survivors had to deal with the posttraumatic stress disorder brought on by
their horrible experiences, and the PTSD is sometimes as bad as the actual
experience itself. Holocaust survivors also had to adjust to how they
were treated. These survivors went from being treated like rats to being
treated like human beings, which is not an easy transition for anyone.
Modern day warriors also have this problem. Many surviving members
of our military come home to experience PTSD and survivor’s guilt, which is to
think that they somehow could have saved their fallen comrades. Warfare and struggle change a person,
and the new person is usually a shocked shell of their former self, ready to be
shattered by the casual cruelty of the obscene world.
The
people who usually deal with extreme levels of stress are the ones with a
strong support system. The people
with strong cohesive family units, or a group of friends or coworkers that
support you are the ones who have the support necessary to get over these
sensations of despair. In modern
day warfare the warriors that lead normal lives after their wartime horrors are
over are the ones who have something to distract them, like a team of some
sort, or the people who are able to shove all of those feelings into a box and
push it away from their conscious, so they do not think about it on a daily
basis.
In Maus, by Art Speigleman, the characters
are all portrayed as different animals. The Jews are mice, Polish people
are pigs, and the Nazis are cats. This further shows how, at that time,
Nazis literally preyed on Jews, like a cat preys on mice. The Nazis
purposely lowered a class of people below them, therefore justifying genocide
to their larger public, as being nothing more than taking care of a rat
infestation. This social degeneration being used against a society is despicable
in every way. The Nazis took all of the Jews’ rights away and left them,
as a race, depleted and thoroughly flabbergasted by the treatment they endured.
After
the Jews were so completely mentally demolished, the survivors had to survive
after that with all of that terrible information in their head. The
mental images of hanging Jews, burning Jews, starving Jews, always haunted
them. The Jews were treated as rats, except rats got more food and
nourishment. Everything that people took for granted was a shock to them.
Showering in hot water, eating until our stomachs are about to burst,
exercising by choice, all of these things were foreign to the shell shocked
Jews after the holocaust.
In Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi, Marji
left Iran fleeing from the war. She grew up in a country that didn’t care
about the war, and who had never known true hardship. They had never been
bombed and forced to bunker down in a basement with their entire family.
They didn’t have to wear a veil so that they wouldn’t be shot. They
didn’t have war at their doorsteps. This meant that Marji was a great
deal more mature than her peers. She needed to grow up fast, or she would
be lost in the chaos of a country going through civil unrest.
Since
Marji was forced to grow up so fast, it made finding new friends difficult
because she already had an idea of what was truly important, and what she
shouldn’t worry about at all. She tried to find people who understood her
predicament, but no one could to relate to her. She eventually had to compromise and make friends with
people who didn’t really understand her, but they couldn’t really hold a decent
conversation with her. This lack of companionship is a big problem for
most people after a traumatic event. When something takes up your entire
life, you live it, breath it, and then you have to flee from it, it leaves a
hole that needs to be filled with something, whether it is a sport, or a good
friend, but that takes time to accomplish.
When people go
through traumatic events, their very souls are scorched with the fire of
oppression. These people need time
and effort to heal that burn, and while some people have the willpower to
completely shut themselves away from the pain, most people need to talk about
their experiences in order to recover.
There is no “better” way to deal with stress; the whole goal is to just
alleviate the pressure being put on you.
Bibliography:
Satarapi,
Marjane. Persepolis.
Spiegleman, Art. Maus.
Luttrell, Marcus. Service: A Navy SEAL at War.
Kyle, Chris. American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in US History.
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