I suppose this is my last attempt to determine if the group you are
drawing together in Oudeis thinks I have anything to contribute to
their creative endeavors. To my own great astonishment, _Achilles in
Vietnam_ has stirred interest in theater circles [Richard Jones, Ph.D.
Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 9:186-188 (1995), among
others], and my conjecture about the relation of ancient Athenian
theater to the military background of its practitioners and audience
was published in *Didaskalia*.
Best,
Jonathan Shay
-------------------------------------
[Originally sent September 8, 1996]
Dear Monika Wunderer,
Attached is the detailed table of contents of my book on the *Iliad*,
_Achilles in Vietnam_. I am currently working, as I mentioned, on a
companion volume on the *Odyssey*.
Also attached is an abstract submitted to the American Philological
Association for the main thesis of the *Odyssey* book, _The Long Way
Home: How Combat Veterans Lose Their Homecoming_.
Warmest regards,
Jonathan Shay
-------------------------------
APA paper abstract submission
Allegory is a millennia-old interpretive approach to Homer
(Stanford, _The Ulysses Theme_, pp36f, 121ff; Clarke, _Homers
Readers_, pp60ff). I shall argue that Homers Odyssey Books 9-12,
comprise a detailed picture--presented metaphorically--of the returning
soldiers struggle to come home to and to live in civilian society. It
thus becomes an ironic allegory of exactly what it says it is, of
Odysseus *nostos*. Detailed comparisons between the *Odyssey* and
combat veterans narratives of their attempts to get home physically,
psychologically, and socially offer a new way to "decode" this epic.
Odysseus, "man of many stratagems," reciprocally sheds light on the
traumatic destruction of social trust that is manifested in obsessive
cunning often pursued by combat veterans.
Why disguise the returning soldiers story? Within the overall
frame of Homers narrative, Odysseus tells his own story of fantastical
adventures to an audience of safe, wealthy, complacent Phaeacian
civilians (Odyssey 9 - 12). To the avid Phaeacians, the truth-filled
war songs of their bard Demodokos are entertainment; to Odysseus they
are the occasions of grief. (This contrast has been noted often, e.g.,
Pucci, _Odysseus Polutropos_, p221f, Pratt, _Lying and Poetry from
Homer to Pindar_, p46n51, Segal, _Singers, Heroes, and Gods in the
Odyssey_, pp24ff, "[The Phaeacians] are also removed from war. The
sufferings of Odysseus and the Greeks at Troy are for them a source of
aesthetic pleasure in the songs of Demodocus. . . . The pain and losses
of Odysseus in his post-Trojan adventures . . . are for Alcinous a
fascinating, pleasurable tale to which he would gladly listen until
dawn . . . whereas Odysseus would prefer to sleep [rather than talk]
and depart at dawn.") The bards Muse-informed songs leave these
civilians untouched by grief, guilt, rage, or terror. Odysseus
recognizes that there is no possibility of communalizing his actual
experience with them, yet he needs them desperately to achieve his own
homecoming. The tales Odysseus gives them are typical of the combat
veterans response to civilians like the Phaeacians--he "bullshits"
them. The compromise he strikes is to convert his ten years of failed
attempts to return from the war into entertaining fantasies--in which
he disguises the true vicissitudes and suffering of a homecoming
soldier....
I shall make no claim of privilege or priority for veterans
experiences in interpreting Odysseus, only that these enrich our
existing understanding. Also, I shall forthrightly acknowledge the
textual problems of this interpretation, so well laid out in Parry,
"The Apologos of Odysseus: Lies, All Lies?" (Phoenix 48:1ff), most
embarrassing being the narrators several mentions of Odysseus marvels
outside the context of Books 9-12.
[The abstract contained a table "decoding" Od. 9-12, which I am unable
to flip from word processor to e-mail, but could send on disk to go up
on the Web.]
-----------------------------------------------------
Title: ACHILLES IN VIETNAM: COMBAT TRAUMA AND THE UNDOING OF CHARACTER
New York: Simon & Schuster Touchstone paperback, 1995. $12, U.S., $16,
Canadian. ISBN 0-684-81321-1. Available through all N.A. bookstores
and most libraries.
Author: Jonathan Shay, M.D., Ph.D., D.V.A. Outpatient Clinic, Boston,
and Department of Psychiatry, Tufts Medical School
DEDICATION
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
INTRODUCTION
PART I
1. BETRAYAL OF "WHAT'S RIGHT"
An army is a moral construction
Victory, defeat, and the hovering dead
Some veterans' view -- What is defeat?
What is victory?
Dimensions of betrayal of "what's right"
On danger in war
The fairness assumption
The fiduciary assumption
Soldiers' rage -- the beginning
2. SHRINKAGE OF THE SOCIAL AND MORAL HORIZON
One American soldier's social space
Tracking Achilles through social space
Desertion
Simplification of the social world to a single comrade
Achilles's character before his psychological injuries
Respect for the dead
Taking prisoners alive
Moral luck
War destroys the trustworthy social order of the mind
Combat is a condition of captivity and enslavement
"Don't mean nothin'" -- Destruction of ideals, ambitions,
affiliations
3. GRIEF AT THE DEATH OF A SPECIAL COMRADE
Soldiers' love for special comrades -- Vietnam and Troy
Homer on the relationship between Achilles and Patroklos
The specialness of the special comrade
Portrait of Patroklos
The grief of Achilles
Being already dead
Grief and the warrior's rage
Communalization of grief in the Iliad and in Vietnam
When were the dead brought to the rear?
Who brought the dead to the rear?
When were the dead mourned?
What was the level of trust,
safety, and social cohesiveness
in the rear during mourning?
Use of mind-altering substances
Who wept for the dead, and how were tears valued?
Who washed and prepared the dead for cremation/burial,
shipment home?
The importance of thwarted grief
4. GUILT AND WRONGFUL SUBSTITUTION
Abandonment and wrongful substitution
Deserving the death sentence
Homecoming renounced
An unintended outcome of religious education?
Soldier's rage -- fatal convergence and
completion
5. BERSERK
Triggers of the berserk state
"Don't get sad. Get Even!"
Characteristics of the berserk state
A beast
A god
Above and beneath -- disconnection from human community
Loss of all restraint
Revenge as reviving the dead
The berserker in the eyes of other soldiers
Flaming ice -- berserk physiology
Aristeiai of American Soldiers in Vietnam -- The differences
Naked berserkers and Achilles' invulnerability
Clinical importance of the berserk state
PART II
6. DISHONORING THE ENEMY
The enemy as enemy: Images in common to Vietnam and Troy
Image of the Vietnamese enemy
Homer: Valor does not depend on contempt for the enemy
Enemy soldiers talk to each other at Troy
Soldiers talk about the enemy at Troy
Religious roots of the enemy as vermin: Biblical anti-epic
in 1 Samuel 17
Clinical importance of honoring or dishonoring the enemy
Abuse of the Dead Enemy
7. WHAT HOMER LEFT OUT
Deprivation
Friendly fire
Fragging
Suffering of the wounded
Civilian suffering
Suffered by all civilians during war
Suffered exclusively or primarily by women
8. SOLDIERS' LUCK AND GOD'S WILL
The social spectrum of luck
Equipment failure
Attributing blame
Job's paradox and the possibility of
virtue
9. RECLAIMING THE ILIAD'S GODS AS A METAPHOR OF SOCIAL POWER
Armies as creators of social power
Gods as REMFs
Heartlessness of the Gods
Readiness to "waste" lives
Sunk costs argument
Sinister demographic agendas
Inconsistent, unreliable, inattentive, distractable
Homeric irony and god's love
PART III
10. THE BREAKING POINTS OF MORTAL EXISTENCE -- WHAT BREAKS?
The official diagnostic criteria for PTSD of the American
Psychiatric Association
PTSD and the ruins of character
Persistence of the traumatic moment -- Loss of authority over
mental function
Untrustworthiness of perception
Memory
Persistent mobilization for danger
Persistence of survival skills
Persistence of betrayal
Persistence of isolation
Persistence of suicidality
Persistence of meaninglessness
Destruction of the capacity for democratic participation
11. HEALING AND TRAGEDY
Is recovery possible?
Return to "normal" is not possible
We don't know if recovery is possible
Yes -- recovery is possible
What is the best treatment?
Why and how does narrative heal?
The law of forgetting and denial
CONCLUSION
Prevention
Protect unit cohesion by unit, rather than individual
rotation
Griefwork
Do not encourage berserking
Eliminate intentional injustice as a motivational
technique
Respect the enemy as human
Acknowledge psychiatric casualties
War is not an industrial process
Pissing contests
Species ethic
ENDNOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
**********************************************
Jonathan Shay
E-mail: jshay@world.std.com
Snail-mail: 11 Miller Street, Somerville MA 02143, USA
[Voice] 617-661-4808
[fax] 617-661-6332 (call 661-4808 to let me know to set up to receive fax)
*********************************************