‘Shock in War-Gothic’: Exploring War Shock and Trauma in Pat Barker’s Another World

Abstract

This article is written to explore the manifestation of after-war shock and trauma in the lives of individuals in the gothic setting. The novel Another World by Pat Barker is dealt with through textual analysis in order to see the gothic novel in a new light and bring forth new perspective. The paper deals with the life of the grandfather, Geordie, the impact of the horrors of war, the life of trenches, the massacre, bloodshed, butchery and the inhumanity practised and suffered by every soldier there, on him and the people surrounding him. It reintegrates the past into present, forming a complex of psychological and visceral into the contemporary resonance. Two poems by Wilfred Owen and Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf are used as secondary texts, and the methodology of textual analysis along with analytical framework of psychoanalysis has been used. This paper aims at opening new vistas for the students of literature by inter-relating Gothic and War literature and intends to fill the research gap. It also plans to educate the mass psyche for a peaceful existence by showing them the long lasting ‘horrors of war’.

Keywords: War Gothic, Another World, Horrors of war, Owen, Mrs. Dalloway