Ah, yeah. The time when people tell us that "it's no big deal" to see someone or something die, or a corpse, and it's no big deal. Then they say that it's no good using real world examples, because we're obviously nothing like people were in the past, and we have such cushy lives that we're more vulnerable to this than dwarves seemingly would be. Obviously, peasents back in the day were inured to this, because death was all around them, and they just accepted it.
So, let's talk about ancient greece, then. Why ancient greece, rather than some other time? Well, Greek society was significantly less superstitious than some contemporaries(I'm looking at you Germania), very literate for the time, and also espoused widespread universal military service(those men too poor to be hoplites still served in some fashion), while maintaining a cult like appreciation of individual human will, strength and courage. They frequently engaged in war with neighbors, widely traded, and are generally speaking, the origin for our western values of freedom and science.
We have numerous playwrights and poets of Greece during the most violent period of it's history(the wars of the Leagues after the persian invasion, and the wars of successors to Alexander, and the Wars of his father, eclipse any wars greece had experienced previously), and we have poets who talk about defecating on themselves while in the ranks, about the horrible sounds of men dying. We have the Greek Historian Polybius telling us that the Greek and Macedonian soldiers facing the romans were HORRIFIED to see the wounds inflicted on their dead by the romans swords.
Death is a terrifying thing, and violent, mauling death is more frightening still. Even animals are weirded out by it, and have been known to undergo traumatic behaviors after experiencing the horrors of death. There are dogs that refused to eat after their owners died and starved themselves to death. Crows will avoid scenes of previous exposures to the death of other crows. Elephants practice burial ceremonies for their dead, and some have been known to starve themselves or otherwise behave in a fashion similar to ptsd.
Also, speakin' of PTSD. It's not limited to soldiers, nor are most soldiers suffering from PTSD, and different people react in different ways. But basically, anyone who undergoes a traumatic event may develop PTSD. It's not a catch-all term for everyone, and it shouldn't be carelessly bandied about, because it's not a simple disorder(mental ones rarely are).
Also, in american litarature, there's a book called The Jungle about what it was like being a butcher in an industrial setting, processing beef in Chicago, I think, back in the 19th century or early 20th. Been a decade or more since I read anything about it. But it's a great read if you want to look into how brutal and disensitizing the business of death is.
Pictures from the American Civil war, to today, of war, horrify and appal people. I have seen animals die gruesome deaths(sometimes at my hands*), and I've personally given chest compressions to a man after he was hit by my van, untill the firefighters got there and pronounced him dead. Various parts of that encounter were disturbing, from the way I noticed his shoe had been knocked off some 30yds from where he was laying, that his right leg was bent at a terrible angle that wasn't possibly, his teeth were knocked back in his mouth, and blocking his airway(probably), his eyes were blue and there was no cognizance in them. That was 8 years ago or so. And I get a little nausous when watching documantaries of the holocaust, or video footage from ISIS. Or that buddhist monk from vietnam burning up.
*Technically foot. I once accidentally steped on a kitten's neck, and it died, and blood squirted everywhere, and I still feel terrible when I think about it. That's atleast 20+ years ago, and I still feel bad about it when I think about it.
Author
Topic: Horrified seeing a goblin die (Read 13115 times)