Att minnas kriget : en studie kring amerikanska veteraner från andra världskrigets skapande av personliga narrativ
(2023) HISS33 20231History
- Abstract
- In this thesis I aimed to answer the question of how American combat veterans from World War II created their personal narratives of their experiences. The main theoretical framework was Samuel Hynes' work about war narratives and personal narratives. I used two theoretical perspectives that to answer this research question where the first perspective was for emotional factors, which was focusing on the role of comradeship, impact of killing, feelings of guilt and the impact of the war on their civilian life. The main theories that were used for this perspective were Thomas Kühne’s work on comradeship in German military society before, during and after World War II, David Grossman's work on the psychological cost of killing in war. The... (More)
- In this thesis I aimed to answer the question of how American combat veterans from World War II created their personal narratives of their experiences. The main theoretical framework was Samuel Hynes' work about war narratives and personal narratives. I used two theoretical perspectives that to answer this research question where the first perspective was for emotional factors, which was focusing on the role of comradeship, impact of killing, feelings of guilt and the impact of the war on their civilian life. The main theories that were used for this perspective were Thomas Kühne’s work on comradeship in German military society before, during and after World War II, David Grossman's work on the psychological cost of killing in war. The second theoretical perspective focused on the human body and its place in the personal narratives, which focused on their own body and other human bodies. The theoretical framework for this perspective was Elaine Scarry’s work about the human bodies positions in the discourse about war.
The source material for this study consisted of 4 published war memoirs as well as 10 recorded interviews conducted or published at least 25 years after the war's end. The memoirs and the interviews were split up equally between two different theaters of war, the West European theater as well as the Pacific War. This thesis concludes that in the creation of the personal narrative both emotional factors and the human body plays a significant role in explaining for the listener that war is nothing like civilian life. Comradeship was used both to explain how the veterans coped with the war experience, as well as explaining it as a kind of bond that you can't experience in civilian life. When using the human body in the narrative the veterans used it as a means of explaining how exposed a soldier is in war, in the way the body is changed in ways you don't experience in civilian life through weather, food and sickness. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9133016
- author
- Gustafsson, Philip LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- HISS33 20231
- year
- 2023
- type
- H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
- subject
- keywords
- personliga narrativ, veteraner, kamratskap, emotionell distansering, kroppen, andra världskriget, upplevelser av krig
- language
- Swedish
- id
- 9133016
- date added to LUP
- 2023-10-02 15:32:33
- date last changed
- 2023-10-02 15:32:33
@misc{9133016,
abstract = {{In this thesis I aimed to answer the question of how American combat veterans from World War II created their personal narratives of their experiences. The main theoretical framework was Samuel Hynes' work about war narratives and personal narratives. I used two theoretical perspectives that to answer this research question where the first perspective was for emotional factors, which was focusing on the role of comradeship, impact of killing, feelings of guilt and the impact of the war on their civilian life. The main theories that were used for this perspective were Thomas Kühne’s work on comradeship in German military society before, during and after World War II, David Grossman's work on the psychological cost of killing in war. The second theoretical perspective focused on the human body and its place in the personal narratives, which focused on their own body and other human bodies. The theoretical framework for this perspective was Elaine Scarry’s work about the human bodies positions in the discourse about war.
The source material for this study consisted of 4 published war memoirs as well as 10 recorded interviews conducted or published at least 25 years after the war's end. The memoirs and the interviews were split up equally between two different theaters of war, the West European theater as well as the Pacific War. This thesis concludes that in the creation of the personal narrative both emotional factors and the human body plays a significant role in explaining for the listener that war is nothing like civilian life. Comradeship was used both to explain how the veterans coped with the war experience, as well as explaining it as a kind of bond that you can't experience in civilian life. When using the human body in the narrative the veterans used it as a means of explaining how exposed a soldier is in war, in the way the body is changed in ways you don't experience in civilian life through weather, food and sickness.}},
author = {{Gustafsson, Philip}},
language = {{swe}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{Att minnas kriget : en studie kring amerikanska veteraner från andra världskrigets skapande av personliga narrativ}},
year = {{2023}},
}