Traumatic Awakenings

In Cathy Caruth's Unclaimed Experience chapter 5, Traumatic Awakenings, she examines the difference between Freud and Lacan meanings of the motive behind a dream and what it means to awaken. In the story about the father sleeping while his dead son's body burn in the next room, Freud states the dream the father has keeps him asleep so he can not know his son's body is burning. While Lacan states the dream awakes the father to the reality.

I feel that dreams are sometimes experienced to remind us of something in the past or let her fantasize about the future. Sometimes dreams are freaky and scary. I feel like once you awaken from a dream but you're not fully awake, you still feel like your in that dream. For example, I am terrified of spiders. So sometimes I will begin to wake up and I would see a spider. So not knowing if that spider is real or fake, I just out of my bed and check my blankets for the spider. It takes me a minute to realize the spider was in my dream. So as the father is sleeping and dreaming about his son talking to him, I think the dream is meant to wake the father.

She also makes the point to awaken is to awaken only to one's repetition of a previous failure to see in time. Like the father could save his son from the illness, so when he sleeps he still sees his son alive but once he wakes up, the reality returns. So like Freud states the dream is a wish fulfillment. That true cause we dream about things we wish would happen. I dream about my future life. We also can change the past in dreams.

Holocaust Museum

Today, we went to the Holocaust Museum in downtown St. Pete. First impression before actually getting inside to see the exhibits, tight security- phones off, book bags left upfront. It was more like they expected someone to take something. Kinda of weird. Once inside, I able to read and look at the different exhibits. It made me think how could someone do this to another human being. Like I don't think it physically possible. Something, I learned from the museum was that Jehovah's Witnesses played a big part in the concentration camps. I didn't know that they too were prisoners and forced to wear purple triangles. The Jehovah's Witness refused to join the Nazi because they do not believe in war so they were arrested and placed in concentration camps, their children were placed in youth camps. Their businesses were shut down, bank accounts frozen. But that didn't stop them from getting their voices heard. They used literature as a means of communication to the outside. They kept hope alive in the Jews placed in the concentration camps. What was most interesting was that they were given a choice of being free unlike the Jews. All they had to do was join Hitler but they did not so they received just as much hatred as the Jews. It shows that they had a lot of respect for themselves and beliefs

http://jehovah.to/gen/holocaust/index.htm
A link for a little info about what the Jehovah's Witnesses went through.
http://www.jewishmemory.info/images/2000-2999/2154/1.jpg.jpg
A picture of what they wore on their clothing.

Spectator

In Forgetting Lot's Wife, Harries introduces the concept of the spectator. The spectator is like the witness or listener where they experience the trauma felt by the victim or survivor. Sebald becomes a spectator as he looks at the painting and feels like he is going out of his mind. It's like he steped away from himself and allowed himself to become completely vulnerable to insanity. Harries also mentions how since Sebald's parents couldn't remember the burning of Nurnberg or his father couldn't remember the beauties of Dresden, he was without those memories as well. Therefore, he replaced those memories with the painting.

You are Damned, We are Saved is focused around the idea of social groups and how the members within them lose their identities. Starting as early as middle school, children are introduced to different socials groups that corrupt their individuality. She gives the example of her friend's daughter becoming a born again Christian and how she disrespects her family. The only way to prevent losing your identity is to choose to not to be apart of any social groups and to be an individual. But this is easier said than done.

Caruth, Vonnegut, and Craig & Egan

As Caruth went over the story of the French woman and Japanese man in Hiroshima mon amour, she examine many of the concepts of trauma that she wrote about in the previous chapter. In the previous chapter, she wrote how trauma has that reciprocal relationship where each member relys on the other to fully understand their own trauma and comes to terms with. The Japanese man didn't fully understand his past but by listening to his French lover, he was able to understand it. The French woman couldn't distinguish between life and death, so when he ask her a question about the cellar he included himself "when you are in the cellar, am I dead?". It was hard for her to forget her German lover while she was in the cellar. It caused her to go crazy. But once she was able to forget him, she was able to fully understand what had happened.

Vonnegut wrote the story of Billy being in Dresden when it was destroyed but having forgotten it until his and his wife's 18th wedding anniversary. At that particular moment when the four band member where singing "That Old Gang of Mine" did it all come back to him. But it took him a little while to figure out why he was so upset. What I kinda don't understand is why he forgot about Dresden. Yes, the French woman needed to forget to save her sanity and to fully understand. I wonder if Billy lost someone at Dresden or something horrible happened to him.
This is link to some images of Dresden during and after the bombing. http://images.google.com/images?q=dresden+bombing&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&resnum=4&ct=title

Armed Forces Military Museum

http://www.armedforcesmuseum.com/

Today Thursday 8th, we went over to the Armed Forces Military Museum in Largo, FL. First impression of the museum was nice layout and very interesting and mind grabbing displays. As I began my walk through, the first display I notice was the military base with the train. I especially liked this display cause the people weren't in stationary pose; they were swimming, barbecuing, marching, standing at ease while the commander spoke, running, diving, fishing, and so on. The interesting thing was that it displayed both the military aspect as well as the daily life of the military family.

In one of our previous classes, we read "I Am Writing Blindly". I saw in one of the exhibits a solider in an trench. In this trench was a cot, a pair of pajama bottoms, a pet bird, a radio, and a pillow with a letter written to his wife. This reminded me of Kolesnikov writing a message to his wife while he waited for death. I couldn't make out everything written on the pillow but I made out the beginning and end. He wrote "To my wife, my darling little wife ... you made my dreams come true". He addressed it with Fort Niagara, NY.

Trauma?

Trauma isn't physical but mental. Trauma is having to relive those events and fully come to terms with them or understand them. Tancred accidentally killed Clorinda while she was disguised as his enemy. After her death, he goes into the forest and slashes a tree with his sword. At the cut, blood starts to leak out and he his Clorinda's voice telling him that he was wounded her again. Trauma isn't experience at the time of the event, but later on when we are reminded of the pain or loss.

Trauma makes a reciprocal relationship with the survivors and victims, the listeners and survivors. The victims need the survivors to tell their stories and the survivors need to tell the stories to go. They live off of each other. The same with the listeners and the survivors. The survivors need to tell someone their story. So that they can fully come to grasp with the trauma. For the listeners to understand the whole trauma event, they must listen to the survivors and sometimes feel the horror, pain, or loss. It's like putting yourself in their place.

Lot's family was told to leave Sodom and not look back. Lot's wife couldn't fight the temptation and looked. She was either so petrify at what she saw that she turned into a pillar of salt or she was punished and turned into a pillar of salt. But the point is by sharing her trauma, we should become her and experience the same outcome.

This link is a song by Prince Alla titled Lot's Wife. It has a nice beat. You have to listen to the whole thing.
http://www.imeem.com/coblack/music/od-ucEsz/prince_alla_lots_wife/

Then there is a comedian named Bob Smiley. He has a joke about Sam's Club having to buy everything in bulk. There's a mention of Lot's wife. It's like 40 seconds in.
http://www.imeem.com/popmusic18/music/ewX_XJtU/bob_smiley_lots_wife_and_coffeeits_ive_got_a_funny_f/