Trauma in War, Trauma in Life: The Pose of the Heroic Battlefield Correspondent

Discusses the effects of war trauma, particularly posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), on the writing and attitudes of notable journalist-literary figures such as Hemingway, Stephen Crane, and Rudyard Kipling. Underwood explores the reasons why some writers, including Hemingway, embrace high-risk engagement with war reporting while others avoid it. Delving into the heroic code of courageous journalistic conduct as understood by Hemingway and other writers dealing with psychological stress, Underwood argues that Hemingway is torn between the heroic code and his PTSD/sentimentalism, the latter expressed in The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms. Points out that Hemingway’s solipsistic World War II reporting contains none of the “honest and authentic journalistic prose that his novels had made famous.” In contrast, Underwood briefly describes the “selfless and detached” war reporting of Martha Gellhorn