Damaged. Lost. Shell-shocked. War neurosis in Rebecca West's "The Return Of The Soldier" and Ford Madox Ford's "Parade's End"

Our contemporary understanding of shell shock is influenced by a multitude of experiences, readings, and speculative reflections on the issue both as a medical phenomenon and as a common war trope. From a theoretical standpoint, shell shock epitomizes the modern sense of frustration, impotence and trauma, as it stands for one’s inability to express and communicate the source of one’s suffering and the unexpected implications of the disease. The victim’s impaired verbalization reiterates the modernist struggle to affirm subjectivity and overcome the limitations of language. Shell shock forces us to question and redefine a prevailing notion of “trauma” and the plurality of conditions that conjure it up, and to come to terms with our own contradictions when it comes to establishing a common approach. The chapter discusses the representation of this type of trauma in two modernist works: The Return of the Soldier (1918) by Rebecca West and Parade’s End (1924-1928) by Ford Madox Ford.