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Seeing the Elephant: Learned Helplessness and Vietnam War Fiction

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Seeing the Elephant: Learned Helplessness and Vietnam War Fiction Seeing the Elephant: Learned helplessness and Vietnam War fiction This thesis is presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Murdoch University, 2014. Portland Jones B.Arts (English), M.A I declare that this thesis is my own account of my research and contains as its main content work which has not previously been submitted for a degree at any tertiary education institution. Portland Jones. ii Abstract The major part of this dissertation (70%) is a work of fiction titled Seeing the Elephant: a novel set mostly in the Vietnamese Highlands in the period 1962-65. In 2009, Minh, a Vietnamese refugee who is recovering from cancer in Australia recalls memories of his work as a translator for Frank, a member of the Australian Army Training Team Vietnam (AATTV). The two men work closely together and, through their shared experiences, form a relationship that will have a lasting impact on both of their lives. The thesis, Everything will always do nothing: Learned helplessness, trauma and the Vietnam War novel, argues that the concept of learned helplessness adds to the scope of what is currently perceived as traumatic response in literary theory, contributing to resolving the tension between literary trauma theory and the study of trauma within other academic disciplines. Learned helplessness is a condition that can affect trauma sufferers, leading to the belief that “no amount of effort can lead to success” (Eggen and Kauchak, 412). The thesis analyses several Vietnam War novels and examines the issues that are foregrounded by reading representations of trauma through the lens of learned helplessness. The thesis offers insights into the role that culture, gender and place play in traumatic representation. It also examines the role of silence in the text, not as a neurobiological symptom of trauma, but as an outcome of cultural censorship. Finally the thesis examines how, when the concept of learned helplessness is employed in literary analysis different representations of healing allow the analysis to move beyond abreactive, linguistic methods to encompass all behaviour that leads to the restoration of contingency. iii Table of Contents Declaration ii Abstract iii Acknowledgements v Seeing the Elephant 1 Everything will always do nothing 216 Prologue 218 Chapter One: Studying trauma in the novel 224 Chapter Two: Reading trauma 270 Chapter Three: Learned helplessness and culture 289 Chapter Four: Healing and transmissibility 312 Chapter Five: Conclusion 321 Works cited 324 iv Acknowledgements Writing this thesis has been, for me, a voyage into uncharted territory. Many people have accompanied me on this Journey and to all of them I offer my sincerest thanks and humble gratitude. To Christine Owen my primary supervisor and mentor - your intelligence and skill has been inspiring. Thank you for your wise guidance and for teaching me that the hardest parapets to scale are the ones of your own making. To Olivia Murphy I offer my everlasting admiration and gratitude. I will always be thankful for your wisdom, skill, kindness and generosity. To Helen Brash and Deborah Robertson, your enthusiasm and expertise in the early days of this proJect were invaluable. Richard Rossiter, your support was both timely and appreciated. Thanks must also go to Warren Jones, Carla Langridge and Simone Pethick – your faith in me has been illuminating. Thank you to Andrew McLean for the lessons in risk taking and for being an intellectual and moral bench- mark. To Rebecca Thomas, Trudie Mclachlan and Elizabeth Oldershaw; no-one could ask for better, or more beautiful, friends. Sophie Warren – you will always have my most heartfelt thanks for the life lessons, for leaning in and for believing. And to all of those wonderful people who enquired, commiserated and encouraged me along the way, I offer my most profound gratitude – your interest and belief were the stars by which I navigated. To Riley, Clancy and Rafferty Mercer – you are my inspiration, my reason and my motivation. Being your mother is a privilege and a Joy. I’m sorry for the chaos, the distraction and all the missed sports carnivals. And finally, Paul Mercer, for once I am at a loss for words. This one’s for you. v Seeing the Elephant 1 Prologue Dak Thay, Viet Nam 1955 My mother had more stories than a famine has mice. She stitched them to our clothes, stirred them into our rice and tucked them into our beds with us at night. She told stories to comfort, to feed and to teach us about the corners of a world that might otherwise remain mysterious to a child. She could weave words into bandages, my mother. She could speak the coolness of dark green shade and the crumble of cinnamon-coloured loam between your toes. Words were sweet between my mother’s lips – the names of our ancestors, songs for planting and for harvest, lullabies. She could find the meaning in bird calls and cloud shadows. She knew the names of all the animals and plants in the forest. She knew which leaves to stew into a tea for fevers and which ones would help a dying man pass swiftly and without fear to the next world. When I was a child, death was only an occasional visitor to our village. After someone in the village died an elder would decide on the exact location of the grave by throwing an egg into the air and digging where it fell. My mother would throw her eggs with particular care – not too close to the well but near enough to the sweeping fruit trees so that the blind tangle of their roots could feast on the body beneath. She had a story for every season, my mother, but my favourite was one that she told to each of her children while we were still at her breast and the entire world was contained within that small sphere of warm skin and sky. “A long, long time ago,” my mother would say. “When the earth was still warm and soft like just risen dough, our country was ruled by giant reptiles. They had the thin-membraned wings of bats, these creatures, and their skin was scaled and cold. Those were troubled times and the reptiles were quarrelsome masters. Their dragon claws tore at the surface of the 2 newborn earth and their harsh cries spilt the sky like lightning.” As she spoke my mother would draw her hands through the air, her fingers sharp. “One day,” my mother would say in a low voice, “the king of the snakes rose from his home in the sea to make war with the serpent queen of the mountains. They circled one another with venomous fangs bared, looking for the other’s weakness. Their angry voices shook all but the sturdiest trees down and tore the fledgling rivers from their beds. The world held its breath in anticipation of the terrible battle to come. But something strange happened. As they reared into the air preparing to strike, they looked into each other’s eyes, peering through the glassy blackness to the core of one another.” My mother smiled and stroked my face with gentle hands. “In that instant they fell in love and nothing would ever be the same again. In their cold, reptilian hearts they found the truth denied to many. That love is love. Beyond that nothing matters.” 3 Chapter One Perth, Australia 2009 Last night I dreamed my mother flew over our house and her long hair drifted behind her like our ancestors’ ashes on water. Her face was pale against the darkness – the smell of cold smoke and a rustling sound of feathers. Until I got sick I believed that I had perfected the art of amnesia. I swapped memory for silence, packing it into the small, damp spaces inside where darkness flourishes. I slept fitfully – without dreaming, and at day break woke to sadness, soft and grey. Forgetting wasn’t easy, behind the silence that I had made there were slivers of light and the memories of once- familiar voices. The sounds of night birds and insects; the warm smell of sunlight on skin. But I learned that happiness is just a Trojan horse for sadness and memory is the hand that opens wide the gate. In the end it was the cancer that brought the memories. Chemotherapy sleep cold like reptile skin. The smell of bile, the bone-deep ache and – for the first time in decades, dreams. My mother was just the first dream of many. She floated over me, and her hands were small stars stretched out against the night. I could hear her whispered stories, the words spinning slowly through the darkness in ever widening circles like smoke. My heart lifted with a quicker beat and I smiled. It was as though she had come to walk me home. 4 I was tired for a long time before I realised I was sick. It crept on like shadows – there was never a moment when it seemed so much worse than it had been the day before. There was no pain, just a dragging feeling in my stomach, as though it were tied to the organs around it with string. I blamed it on the passage of time, on my job and on my shallow, dreamless sleep until one day I looked in the mirror and it was like looking at myself through yellow glass. My face, my hands and even the whites of my eyes were yellow. In the hospital I wore a blue gown tied up at the back. A young woman with a smiling face badge on her chest rubbed my stomach with oil then ran a small, plastic box over the skin.
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