Plumes Agonistes

The chapter assesses the Great War rehabilitation program’s effectiveness by focusing on screenwriter-novelist Laurence Stallings, whose 1924 novel Plumes is a semi-autobiographical account of his treatment for a leg wound. Initially protagonist Richard Plume refuses amputation, choosing instead a bone graft that requires a painful brace. The brace assumes a liminal prosthetic identity that reflects Richard’s own confused sense of resolve: he both refuses amputation and the support of family back home because he is afraid that accepting both would, as the pages of Carry On had warned a few years earlier, allow his prosthesis to overshadow his personality. The pain-inducing brace itself takes on a malevolent spirit, which sours Richard’s personality and threatens his relationship with his family. Only after amputation and committing to a prosthesis does Richard receive the spiritual rejuvenation that Stallings otherwise depicts in his 1925 silent film The Big Parade, directed by King Vidor.