Essay Questions

Discuss the use of psychological techniques and illness in the novel.

In the time the novel was written, the theory of psychoanalysis of Freud was widespread. So, we see in the novel how the trauma that created that memory loss is cured by psychoanalysis, in this case talking openly about what happened. But one can wonder: why the soldier has forgotten everything since he was twenty? There are many different kinds of memory loss: localized (you forget only that particular traumatic moment), continual (you forget from that traumatic event to the present), generalized (you forget almost everything), etc. But the memory loss from one particular date it is somehow difficult to believe, more so since the trauma was not produced at that date—when he was twenty years old and was in love with another woman, how traumatic is that? So it may look more like a literary device to serve the plot than something plausible. For this reason, and for the “simplistic use of the psychotherapeutic techniques” in the novel, among others, this work was dismissed by the critics—rating it as amateurish—and it was not until the end of the 20th century that it became of relevance.

How is this book related to its period?

The EEUU entered the war in April 1917. This novel was published in the year 1918, when the World War I just ended. Many soldiers returned from the war and had to face the great traumas that a crude situation like that had to cause them. How many women were waiting for their husbands, sons, fathers or cousins in that year? Only the title must have been quite appealing in itself, one with whom almost anybody could have related at that particular historical moment. According to Cristina Pividori (in a paper of 2010), this book was the first deliberate evocation of the returned soldier in literature, something that only that unexpected and raw reality of the Great War could have triggered. So, one couldn’t understand or conceive the existence of the work in this case with its historical situation.

Happiness being unconscious or unhappiness being conscious? How this book treats this dilemma and how other works of art have done it?

The main character has forgotten traumatic experiences in order to be able to cope with his life. The people around him must decide whether to lie to him and pretend that nothing has happened or show all the tragedy that had caused him to forget. This question, for the modern reader, might seem familiar since it has been described in many popular movies like Matrix (1999)—in which one had to take one pill to forget if one whished—Men in Black (1997) or Shutter Island (2010). But, was this book a pioneer on this? Well, depending on your faith you might agree on the following point: at the beginning of the Old Testament there was no mention of an afterlife, heaven was not for humans, nor there was any paradise waiting.

This view is held essentially by all the Pentateuch and, most prominently in books such as Ecclesiastes or The book of Job. What happened then? The Israelites went to exile and some of them were persecuted. So, how one was to maintain his faith if that very same faith or identity was to cost you your life? So, the first book of the bible that introduced the afterlife concept was the Book of Daniel, the one which was written in a period of unprecedented persecution of Jews (some centuries before Christianity was born and so the concept of afterlife established for good). Was that a lie to help coping with the traumatic experience of that community—brutishly persecuted? Was that a try to forget the cold and mysterious nature of death—an unjust one—in order to be happy and content?