Document Type

Article

Publication Date

6-3-2024

Publication Title

Humanities

Volume

13

Issue

3

Pages

1-10

Publisher Name

MDPI

Publisher Location

Basel, Switzerland

Abstract

In Parade’s End, Ford Madox Ford approaches the experience of trauma in an unusual way—it is no longer just past experiences, but the expectancy of dismal events that become as traumatic. Ford chooses worry for such rendering. In order to make the correlation between suffering and sensibility, he places worry in the lives of his characters, which reflects on Ford’s own life. This discussion will introduce the idea that worry is going to be a major component of Ford’s psychologising of war. I explore this worry-driven sensibility and the ways it is reflected, especially in the characters’ obsession with the anticipation of death and face-forward mourning. Within this loss-filled atmosphere, worry over being killed dominates the narrative and continually feeds the sentiment of mournfulness. The Great War transforms into a Greater War, seeping into the societal realm, where it amplifies the private emotional battles of the characters, centred around worry. Consequently, the narrative highlights the coexistence of these personal and public conflicts, ultimately resulting in both physical and psychological losses throughout the story.

Comments

Author Posting © Author(s), 2024. This article is posted here by permission of MDPI for personal use and redistribution. This article was published open access in Humanities, VOL. 13, (June 2024), https://doi.org/10.3390/h13030084.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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