Research Proposal: The Psychology of War
by llentine ~ November 29th, 2010. Filed under: Uncategorized.For the research paper, I am choosing to write about the psychology of the war. In other words, the effects war has on the human mind. The works from class I will be using are Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried,” Thomas Pynchon’s “Gravity’s Rainbow.” The goal of this paper is to explore what triggers soldiers to, in a sense, lose their mind. It will also look at the question, if a soldier isn’t obviously mentally unstable after war, does that mean it had absolutely no effect on him? and is there any way to bring their mind fully back into the state it was in before they went to war?
I feel the relevance of this topic is pretty great, because a big part of war that gets overlooked is the psychological aspect of it. War isn’t just about a physical battle or the political intension behind it, it has a lot to do with the individuals fighting. Sadly, many do not return from war but most do and the effects of the war on their mentality can be very interesting to learn about, because it effects not only them but their families that eagerly await their arrival home and then now have to deal with this new version of them. The human mind is a very delicate thing, and I think that what war does to it is definitely worth taking a look at.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Pynchon, Thomas. Gravity’s Rainbow. New York, NY:
Penguin Books, 1973.
O’Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. New York, NY:
Broadway Books, 1990.
December 10th, 2010 at 1:28 pm
I’m just curious to know if you already have an answer to your questions. I think it will be very difficult to answer what triggers a soldier to lose their mind because it is different with each case.
I think you can also look at Jarhead and focus on the soldier who commits suicide at the end of the movie. This soldier was so immersed with war that he couldn’t come back to reality. In a sense, he “lost his mind.”