War

2.“War leaves mental as well as physical scars.” Discuss the truth of this statement using evidence from No Pretty Pictures, short stories, extracts (from Night and other text) and poetry.

When something drastic happens in your life it always leaves an impact on your memories. This has happened to those who have lived through wars, not only memories but also mental and physical scars. Some of those who have endured wars first hand and have suffered with scars both mental and physical left by war have recorded their experiences in autobiographies and poems.

In ‘Losses’ Randall Jarrell, shares with the reader the losses and pain he suffered while he was at war and the pain he suffered after the war also. Although he survived he writes,

“It was not dying: everybody died.

It was not dying: we had died before.”

He describes the death of others whom he cared for or knew and the destruction of his surroundings. Something inside him died, he was never the same after seeing massive damage inflicted on everything and he expresses this. In the last verse of ‘Losses’, he says,

‘It was not dying- no, not ever dying;

But in the night I died I dreamed that I was dead,

And the cities said to me: ‘Why are you dying?

We are satisfied if you are’; but why did I die?’

Jarrell shares with the audience a taste of what was going on inside his head and sharing with the reader that dying doesn’t mean death of the body, but he is dying in such a way that his soul and personality was becoming different from before the war. He was killing people and his friends are being killed. He thought eventually everything around him will turn to dust, and was afraid he would lose his sanity and the person he used to be, thus leaving him mental scars from trauma caused by war and physical scars inflicted by war.

This was also the case with Elie Wiesel the author of Night. He describes many incidents, which were so intense that it scarred him mentally. In the third chapter of his autobiography he records how he is separated from his mother He had no idea what could happen to her and feared that she might die. A few minutes later he was confronted with death itself. He was standing in front of a gigantic fire thinking he would be thrown in, but instead he witnessed dead people being thrown into the fire, babies and young children.