Title:

Objective Correlative of Post-War Trauma: And Bugs Don’t Bleed

Abstract

In literary criticism, an objective correlative is a group of objects or events which

systematically represent emotions in a given text. According to this context, the study argues
that Matt Gallagher‟s And Bugs Don‟t Bleed, a trauma fiction, exemplifies this term as it
contains many fictional objects which convey the emotions in the text to the reader. The
argument is mainly tackled through the literary term of T. S. Eliot‟s „Hamlet and His
Problems‟ embedded within the theoretical framework of trauma and its literary
representation. The study aims to answer the following questions: how does Eliot‟s literary
term find its echo in the examined narrative and what are fictional objects that implicitly
indicate the multiple meanings that help to motivate the reader‟s emotional and critical
response. The study is divided into three sections and a conclusion. Section one is an
introduction which highlights the argument of the study, its hypothesis, its significance and
objectives, literature review, methodology, and limits and delimits of the study. While
Section two highlights the theoretical and literary framework of the study, Section three
examines And Bugs Don‟t Bleed with reference the literary term “Objective Correlative” and
trauma fiction.

Key Words: objective correlative, trauma fiction, post-traumatic stress disorder, And Bugs
Don‟t Bleed, Matt Gallagher.

Research Statement

The present study focuses on T.S. Eliot‟s notion of the objective correlative in Matt
Gallagher‟s And Bugs Don‟t Bleed to analyse how PTSD is portrayed in trauma fiction.
Thus, through the identification of fiction and objects in the plot, the study aims at
determining how those literary tools provoke feelings, which resemble psychological
consequences of wartime in veterans. In this vein, the research draws attention to forms of
witnessing that trauma fiction enacts and elaborates in relation to war and appeals to readers‟
feeling and thinking.
Literature Review

Objective Correlative: The study builds on T.S Eliot‟s “objective correlative” that simply
means that certain objects or events in a literary work elicit certain emotions. This idea is
introduced by Eliot in Hamlet and His Problem and is used to look for some of emotions in
Gallagher by analyzing his work with the use of symbolic elements.

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): This paper aims at addressing PTSD especially with
reference to veteran soldiers, as well as addressing how such a condition is depicted in trauma
fiction. Again works of; Cathy Caruth and Geoffrey Hartman are cited and PTSD as
fragmented memories and emotional struggles. Also the latest studies of the post-war trauma
have concerned the psychological and sociological consequences of the post-war trauma.
Several academic studies from the last five years highlight the complexity of trauma
experienced by both civilians and military personnel in conflict and post-conflict regions.

Epigenetic Effects of War Trauma: An excellent study conducted in Frontiers in Psychology

demonstrates that not only the direct victim but also generations are affected by war trauma –
epigenetic changes in PTSD. These works also describe how such history as warfare can
change genetic tendencies to stress in future generations through changes to gene expression.
This suggests that the biological ramification of trauma may extend beyond the immediate
survivors, affecting their descendants as well.
(https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/epidemiology/articles/10.3389/fepid.2023.1066158/full)

Meta-Analysis of Mental Health in War Zones: A meta-analysis study of 45 studies carried

out in different conflict regions was conducted and published in Frontiers in Psychiatry
(2022) on war exposed populations‟ PTSD, anxiety, and depression. Post-traumatic stress
was determined to be present in 23.5% of the sample with civilians experiencing higher rates
than the military. This also illustrates the differentiated pattern of mental health outcomes as
a function of more or less involvement in the conflict, given that civilians are more
susceptible to post-trauma derangement because they do not, as a rule, go through training for
such situations.
(https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2022.978703/full)

A study done in 2022 in BMC Psychiatry selected participants affected by war from
Northeast Ethiopia and employed clinical interviews to diagnose PTSD. High level of PTSD
was revealed, and the relation between the lack of social support, substance use, and
traumatic events during the war. The researchers stressed the fact that social factors either
compounded or diminished the impact of trauma in the lives of the participants, and, in
particular, the participants who had higher levels of social support, reported fewer symptoms
of PTSD. (https://bmcpsychiatry.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12888-023-05116-w)

Another meta-analysis conducted in 2022 focused on the different mental health outcomes
between civilians and military personnel with the result indicating that the later had slightly
lower rates of PTSD at 21.3% compared to civilians 25.7%, however, both were highly
anxious and depressed. The study also mentioned a decrease in PTSD rates after the conflict
and yet the rates were significantly higher than the non-conflict rates. This shows that war
trauma does not go away even after the war.
(https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2022.978703/full)

The findings of all these studies which are given illustrate that the effects of war, trauma are
not only psychological but there are emotional, physical, social and even genetic as well.
Therefore, trauma survivors require sustained, comprehensive, and intervention at various
hierarchical levels.

The Poetics of Trauma Fiction: Trauma is analysed by Laurie Vickroy and James Berger who
deal with symbols, descriptions of memory and flashback as means of representation of a
trauma. The genre enable literature to also capture the delayed impacts of the event.

Matt Gallagher: It is entirely clear that Gallagher drew on his experiences as captain for his
platoon when depicting trauma in the veterans. His work including and most especially And
Bugs Don‟t Bleed; shows the repercussion of war, framed by PTSD.

The study argues that Matt Gallagher‟s And Bugs Don‟t Bleed, a trauma fiction, exemplifies
this term as it contains many fictional objects which convey the emotions in the text to the
reader. The argument is mainly tackled through the literary term of T. S. Eliot‟s „Hamlet and
His Problems‟ embedded within the theoretical framework of trauma and its literary
representation. So, by this research we answering two questions, first one is that How does
Eliot‟s literary term find its echo in the examined narrative. And second one is that What are
fictional objects that implicitly indicate the multiple meanings that help to motivate the
reader‟s emotional and critical response.
Research Methodology

The research follows the qualitative approach which examines how the story is told and thus
understands how participants perceive and make sense of their experiences. The approach of
this study allows the researcher to examine the nature of post-traumatic stress disorder,
including its quality, different manifestations, the context in which it appears or the
perspectives from which it can be perceived.

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