A fundamental part of our humanity is our visceral experience of the world which becomes naturally desensitized over\u00a0 time.\u00a0 Specifically as this relates to The Road and The Black Hole of Trauma, experiencing continuous traumatic triggers can lead to two paths for a traumatized mind.\u00a0 The first is the increasing insensitivity to these events as the mind becomes less and less effected in order to protect the subject of the trauma, or the mind becomes overwhelmed by its experience and the trauma becomes the new paradigm for the brain’s view of the world.\u00a0 From that point on all experience will be filtered through or shown in the light of the defining traumatic experience of the individual’s life.<\/p>\n
Clearly in The Road, the man and boy have reacted to the collapse of their world and the daily fight for survival by reacting in the first pattern, desensitization.\u00a0 As has been stated earlier by Pierce I believe, on p. 12 , “You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget.”\u00a0 This phrase provides an intriguing view into the otherwise ironclad psyche of the central character who’s wishes and desires are simple and known, to get his son to a safer place, but whose actual thoughts about his world and life are more ambiguous.\u00a0 In this sentence on p.12 when faced with a rotting corpse in a rotting world, he wraps himself in a steely facade of indifference, but in his words we see deeper into his mind than anywhere else.\u00a0 He makes it clear that he wishes he could forget all the traumatic things that he and his son witness on a daily basis, but he can’t, and so he falls into the second category from above as well: the trauma has become the paradigm for his experience of life.\u00a0 He expects it and so is no longer surprised by the horror and devastation around him, but what if the bodies disappeared and the world returned to sunshine, parks, and dogs chasing cats?\u00a0 Or even just dogs for that matter?\u00a0 I don’t think the man would be able to cope in a restored world where his trauma had no context or application.<\/p>\n
This hypothesis is corroborated by Van der Kolk and McFarlane on pp.5-6, where they say, “…it is the persistence of intrusive and distressing recollections, and not the direct experience of the traumatic event itself, that actually drives the biological and psychological dimensions of PTSD.”\u00a0 As I have said in previous posts, it is our worst moments and most traumatic experiences that truly define who we are, or at least how we react to such life events defines who we are.\u00a0 Professor Sample questioned this claim in my blogging audit and so I find this is the ideal time to support my argument given the context.\u00a0 The reason going out for coffee or walking your dog does not define who you are is because those events are commonplace and do not require serious mental application.\u00a0 It is the situations that effect our emotion or place us under great physical and\/or mental strain that give us the opportunity to discover for ourselves who we are. A person only knows how they react in the split second of decision when they decide to save their own life or that of another.<\/p>\n
The world of WWII did not have to turn a blind eye to the Holocaust, the information was available regarding the Nazi’s atrocities but people disbelieved it and discounted it as exaggeration, and thus 11 million people died horribly.\u00a0 But some people did not turn a blind eye and instead risked their lives and often paid the ultimate price to right a terrible wrong.\u00a0 These are the people we remember.\u00a0 Oskar Schindler.\u00a0 The Warsaw Ghetto that held out longer than France.\u00a0 The Danish people and government.\u00a0 The Holocaust is possibly the most internationally traumatizing event in recent history, and now we live in a world where genocide is seemingly commonplace and widespread from the Middle East to Africa to Indonesia.\u00a0 Our global trauma has become a self-perpetuating experience.\u00a0 What would this world be like with out the mass murder we have come to expect from the evening news?\u00a0 That has so recently come home to us in our own schools and towns?\u00a0 What would that world be like?\u00a0 We are defined by this violence now, it is the prime characteristic of our world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A fundamental part of our humanity is our visceral experience of the world which becomes naturally desensitized over\u00a0 time.\u00a0 Specifically as this relates to The Road and The Black Hole of Trauma, experiencing continuous traumatic triggers can lead to two paths for a traumatized mind.\u00a0 The first is the increasing insensitivity to these events as… Continue reading The Black Hole in The Road<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[87,84,85,86],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794"}],"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\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=794"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":799,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794\/revisions\/799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}