- In “The Beach,” we read a snapshot of how a young couple is spending their time outside the war. Both of them try to focus their attention on the immediate surrounding environment of the beach/the casino to avoid thinking about how their relationship is forever altered and quite possibly doomed because the war has left the young man disabled. Would you classify their attempts at distraction as a form of trauma response, such as escapism? Or are they simply enjoying their time away from the war? How do their actions resemble those of Catherine and Frederic? Do you feel more sympathy for this couple than for Catherine and Frederic? If so, what makes them different?
- “Moonlight” provides some vastly different descriptions of a nighttime war experience than we have read thus far. In particular, the sounds and presence of gunfire and war are described as comforting to the narrator, like a lullaby. Contrastingly, she is afraid of seemingly normal occurrences such as the moonlight and freshly mown hay. There is also quite a bit of back and forth about lies and truth. Lies are being whispered to her from the earth outside, while the truth rings out from the wounded inside. Do you think it is possible that the war can have a comforting or perhaps grounding presence? What is the significance of the narrator being afraid of natural elements such as the moon and grass, whilst being comforted by the horror of a manmade war? What are the lies she references? Finally, what do you think Borden wants us to take away from this story about living through the war as a nurse?
- “Enfant de Malheur” is arguably one of the most violent passages about the war we’ve read in this class, despite there being no fighting amongst soldiers. The dying boy is described as young and beautiful yet vile and demonic. He was a forced soldier who fought for his own freedom, not his country. What does Borden’s description of the suffering of this “rotten child” compared to the suffering of older soldiers convey about her ideas of heroism? At the end of this story, Guerin is said to have saved the boy, and he dies peacefully. Do you believe he is truly saved? What does it mean for the boy to be saved in this context? Does it even matter if he is?
2 thoughts on “Jess’s Reading Questions for Oct. 21st”
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I wanted to take some inspiration from your question about Moonlight, especially since I recently watched Happy Death Day, which gave me some unexpected points of comparison. In the film, the main character relives the same day repeatedly, dying in a different way each time, only to wake up and experience it all over again. Over time, the only source of lasting comfort for her becomes the constant nature of her deaths—they are predictable and steady, even in their violence. In contrast, the ordinary aspects of her life, the routines and familiar people and places, begin to drive her toward madness, because they lose meaning when experienced repeatedly without variation or resolution.
I find this dynamic interesting in relation to Moonlight, where nature—the moonlight itself, the “whispering grass,” and other seemingly beautiful elements—becomes a source of unease and even revulsion. Just as the film’s protagonist is destabilized by the mundane repetition of her normal life, the nurse in Moonlight is haunted by reminders of the world before war. These markers of normality—light, scent, and nature—become painful because they signify a life and beauty that she can no longer access. Perhaps this story suggests that trauma can invert perception, making what was once “lovely” feel intolerable, and that the constant presence of life outside of war serves as a reminder of what has been irrevocably lost.
I hope this makes sense (sorry, I just really like Happy Death Day), and thank you for the questions!
#2
The speaker’s extremely negative reaction to the sight and smell of the freshly-mown hay was surprising and disquieting to me when I first read it. Now that I’ve thought about it more it begins to make sense. Planting and harvesting is done to prepare for the future, to plan ahead- something the speaker/nurses are not doing. They are living in a sort of liminal, timeless place. Planning and future have no meaning to them when they have to focus so intensely on the now and what must be done in that moment. The only sense of time they have is how much longer the dying men have to live; there is no future, so the sight and smell of mown hay is confusing and disruptive to them.