A disorder in people who have experienced traumatic events frequently relive those events and their emotional impact. Although it is a recent technical term, the disorder was first brought to public attention after World War One, when it was commonly referred to as “shell shock,” the classic symptoms of which included a blank stare, constant panic, and loss of normal functions (like sleeping, talking, and/or eating). A number of the “black diggers,” including Bertie, Tommy, and Nigel, clearly suffered from PTSD or shell shock during and after the War.
PTSD Quotes in Black Diggers
The Black Diggers quotes below are all either spoken by PTSD or refer to PTSD. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Act One
Quotes
And the worst of it is that Ollie is still alive, he’s in the hospital and he hasn’t got a face but he’s alive Aunty May. But he hasn’t got a face Aunty May, he hasn’t got a face.
Related Characters:Archie (speaker), Aunty May
Related Symbols:Letters
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
52
Explanation and Analysis:
In his second letter to his Auntie May, Archie tells the story of their family friend Ollie Thomas, who simply sat down on a bench with some other soldiers and “shot himself in the face” in a suicide attempt. Like all his letters, the one in this scene points to soldiers’ immense distance from home but continued, intimate relationships with family members who love them and share in their suffering—both these dimensions also reflect the role of letters and related documentary evidence in this play’s production (although they crossed enormous gaps of space and time, they brought poignant, personal, emotionally Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantiu
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The timeline below shows where the term PTSD appears in Black Diggers. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
End Matter
...the war, something the government failed to do—and this failure contributed to the prevalence of PTSD among Indigenous World War One veterans.
(full context)