After reading \u201cThe Black Hole of Trauma\u201d, I have a couple of thoughts when relating this to \u201cThe Road\u201d. The main thing that keeps running through my mind is that I really don\u2019t see very many PTSD symptoms in this book. Sure, the theme of avoidance is prominent in this book, and there certainly are scenes where the boy and his father are clearly trying to bury their feelings or encouraging each other to block out the horror of trauma that they are experiencing, (see \u201cIf I shouldnt cry you shouldnt cry either\u201d, p.270). But there really isn\u2019t a sense of panic attacks or voluntary compulsive reepxosure to trauma. There are many scenes where the boy and his father are waking up from their nightmares, but I think that considering the fact that they are living in the last days of mankind, a \u201cnuclear winter\u201d as was mentioned in class, this is to be expected. I think that the father has certainly succumbed to the \u201cnumbing\u201d sensation that occurs to victims, because we only see him shedding his fa\u00e7ade and breaking down in tears once, when his son is sick and suffering and close to death (At least, I think that\u2019s the only time we see that strong of an emotion out of him, to the best of my memory). However, the boy bursts into tears regularly, just about every five pages or so. He cries whenever the father leaves someone behind on the road, he cries whenever his father hands him the gun for him to shoot, he cries when its time to get up and go again. His constant crying is, I think, a sign that he has not yet embraced the voluntary amnesia or detachment that can strike these victims. The boy is still very much alive emotionally and has not yet put up walls that would distance him from the chaotic world around him. He is raw and unprotected, and I think, on the pages, he\u2019s really the only reminder of the world that we like to believe we are a part of right now.<\/p>\n
I think that the reason that this article does not translate as well, in terms of the symptoms and behavior patterns that we are being told to look for in victims of trauma, is because first of all, this is a trauma that we are lucky enough to not have experience with. A trauma of this magnitude has not been seen before in our world, the trauma of not only witnessing the destruction of your self and your loved ones, but also of every element of your surroundings. Not only your city or nation, but every single element of the outside world around you- your planet, the universe and heavens themselves. No one has ever experienced that before, so of course this article could not discuss such a calamity. Also, there\u2019s been no chance for the characters to fully relax. The study of PTSD always takes place when the victim returns to the previous environment and has to learn how to live in their original world and reconcile themselves with their experience. When these characters have \u201ccontrol environment\u201d for them to integrate their experience in, there is no area for these symptoms to manifest. Since we are looking at this article again in the next book, I have a feeling that this article will be a bit more relavant- at least I\u2019m hoping, because I don\u2019t know if I can read another book like \u201cThe Road\u201d right away! Talk about a black hole of trauma! The title of that article could have just as easily been the title for this book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After reading \u201cThe Black Hole of Trauma\u201d, I have a couple of thoughts when relating this to \u201cThe Road\u201d. The main thing that keeps running through my mind is that I really don\u2019t see very many PTSD symptoms in this book. Sure, the theme of avoidance is prominent in this book, and there certainly are… Continue reading “Black Hole of Trauma” and “The Road”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=773"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":811,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773\/revisions\/811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}