Date of Award
8-2016
Culminating Project Type
Thesis
Degree Name
English: English Studies: M.A.
Department
English
College
College of Liberal Arts
First Advisor
Matthew Barton
Second Advisor
Rex Veeder
Third Advisor
John Harvey
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Keywords and Subject Headings
comics, comic book, Doug Murray, trauma, visual language, visual narrative, trauma studies
Abstract
This thesis examines Marvel’s The ‘Nam comic series, written by Doug Murray, through the analytical lens of trauma studies. The paper looks at the early run of the comic series, and shows how the author of the comic book exposes the readers to the traumas of being a US Army infantry man serving in Vietnam. The third chapter explores how the draft and the young age of the soldiers played a role in their experience of trauma and how they reacted to it, while the fourth chapter explains how the traumas of war affected the soldiers during their time in war. The fifth chapter examines the use of the comic book as a medium and shows how the comic book was used to amerce the reader into the experiences of trauma that the young soldiers of the comic stories had to live through. Finally, the paper concludes with how comic books, specifically comics like The ‘Nam, can be used in education and as a tool to start a conversation about what it means to be a veteran of war.
Recommended Citation
McNeil, Andrew S., "Doug Murray’s The ‘Nam: A Literary examination of the Traumatic Effects of War Told through Visual Literature" (2016). Culminating Projects in English. 64.
https://repository.stcloudstate.edu/engl_etds/64
