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Sunday, November 08, 2009
PTSD in Ithaca & Achilles in Afghanistan
Posted by Bill Benzon on 11/08/09 at 09:41 AM
Two weeks ago when I was hanging out in Bérubé’s joint Ric Rader, as USC classicist, mentioned Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character in passing. It uses the Iliad as a lens through which to examine the experience of soldiers in Vietnam. Now Caroline Alexander has an op-ed in The New York Times that makes the similar connection:
And most significantly, epic tradition hints at the dilemmas of military commemoration. In “The Iliad,” Achilles must choose between kleos or nostos — glory or a safe return home. By dying at Troy, Achilles was assured of undying fame as the greatest of all heroes. His choice reflects an uneasy awareness that it is far easier to honor the dead soldier than the soldier who returns. Time-tested and time-honored, the commemoration rites we observe each Memorial Day — the parades and speeches and graveside prayers and offerings — represent a satisfying formula of remembrance by the living for the dead that was already referred to as “ancient custom” by Thucydides in the fifth century B.C.
The commemoration of the veteran — the survivor who did not fall on the field of war — is less starkly defined. The returned soldier, it is hoped, will grow old and die among us, like Nestor, in whose time “two generations of mortal men had perished.” In our own times, the generation born in the optimistic aftermath of World War II has already encountered veterans of both world wars, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Persian Gulf war and our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq — and still has several decades of martial possibilities in reserve. As the earlier of those wars recede into the past, their old soldiers fade away; and thus, commemorative rites for the veteran — by definition, the survivor — also tend to end, perversely, at graves.
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