Septimus

I worry about Septimus. Poor Septimus. What’s to become of him? Does Sir William think he can just send Septimus off, to some remote barn, and he will be healed in two weeks time? Surely Sir William is not as dense as to think that his proportion will be righted only after a short stint away from familial pressures (or whatever it is that seems to trigger these moments of “madness” as it were). It seems that Dr. Holmes, a conventional simple doctor, did not know of PTSD, and while the psychiatrist (is he a psychiatrist?) Sir William may not acknowledge it blatantly, he does have some inkling of its existence. But this is precisely why I am worried; He knows of the grave seriousness of Septimus’ condition and he does not know how to treat it with any other method than complete isolation.
Poor Lucrezia, too, I worry about. She didn’t know how bad it was, she still doesn’t. She thinks her dear Septimus has gone mad. In a sense he has, but it all comes back to Heart of Darkness. Septimus can see the darkness that others are incapable of, or refuse to see, and so he is plagued by it. He is plagued by his own worthlessness, the worthlessness of everyone else and the sickening human nature that tries to force him to forget that evil. Septimus hates himself for being cold and feelingless. Even when the things of the most despair are brought upon him (his wife expressing in such clear anguish that they will never have children, the thought of Evans dying) he feels nothing. He feels no sorrow, no guilt or pity. He acknowledges surrender. He surrenders to the human race, but what does that mean? He is surrendering to its evil, to its curious purpose (if there is a purpose, he wonders). And Lucrezia is there all the while. She was quite unwillingly strung into all of this despair- as was Septimus might I add, though his was a connection more obvious. There is no turning back for the two of them. The War, what Septimus has seen and lived, has destroyed them. No amount of solitude will heal his psychological wounds.
And, even if he does return a renewed man, we know he is not truly healed. Years, decades, after the War, I have heard, men still awake in cold sweats, screaming through tears. Men, grown men- now elderly, awake in the dead of night seeing the face of the man they shot, the bodies they burned, the bombs they saw go off. And the noise. The voices of the dead are deafening.

The War has caused Septimus to question everything he once believed to be happy. He wonders, and so does the reader, did he ever love Lucrezia? He hates himself for dragging her into the mess of depression, but he has no way out. He does not kill himself- not because he doesn’t want to- but because there is no suitable way. He has pondered it, yes, in great detail, but he has reasoned he himself is too weak to complete the task. What an odd thought, of killing one's self and then the thought of being too weak to do it. I was always told suicide was the weak thing to do, but to him, here, in this most depressing world, it becomes the most difficult way to escape. He cannot seem to escape his mind and the reality of what he’s done- the crimes he has committed. The crimes that no one else sees as crimes. Only those that pulled the trigger, only those that saw the life seep into the wet earth, know.
Septimus. If he had known what he was getting into, do you think he would have done it? Fought, I mean. I know it’s the honorable thing to do, to serve, but do you think he would have done it, knowing what he knows now? I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.