Benny the war in Europe Essay Example

the very sad ending of the story; that he watches a newsreel concerning war matters, and it all then comes back casting him, once again, into despair.

Bella. Bella is the daughter of Mr. Myerson, the proprietor of Pop’s Cigar & Soda. She works behind the counter in her father’s shop. Bella is not exactly the town’s beauty queen. We learn that she has a clubfoot, mousy hair and that she has a vague beard going. Everybody, including her father, is sure that Bella will end up an old maid, but she turns out to be the first one to notice that Benny has changed. This demonstrates her qualities, despite that she is not all beautiful on the outside. Maybe because Bella is not filled with confidence, she has the quality of being patient and caring for other people, especially Benny, whose weakness she instantly discovers.

Bella & Benny. This is the point where Bella and Benny’s relationship begins. Benny has trouble opening up to Bella. He clearly wants to tell her about the war, but he always jams when the images appear to him. Bella clearly wants to help him, unconsciously helping herself, but in her efforts to do so, she takes on a maternal role, in which she would rather have Benny forget everything about the war. So instead of encouraging him to dig deeper into his emotional issues, she regards him as a child, waiting for him to be reasonable whenever he awkwardly tries to share his experiences with her. This “ignorance” to Benny’s problems continues in their marriage, and eventually becomes the reason that Bella leaves Benny to himself

while having one of his nervous seizures.

The post war-period, of course, were different times, and, taking time, place and culture into consideration, one can not expect a simple community to react otherwise. This is, I believe the point in the story: That shell shock was a reality to a great many families after WW2 – or any war. Only, in WW2 people were not told about mental disorders as a consequence of the war. It was not a “decent” way to leave the war, after having served three or four years. Therefore this concept called “shell shock” was created to give the families back home a legitimate physical reason for the soldiers’ state of mind. The explanation was, that they had been hit by shrapnel from a grenade very close to them and still suffered a shock from this experience. It is my feeling that this concept was all right, given the social culture at that time, but it is a fact that many soldiers never really recover mentally from the things they see in war.