Visions of the Dead in "Dispatches" and "The Odyssey"

Michael Herr’s Dispatches contains vivid descriptions of the Vietnam War and the psychological effects of trauma endured by the people who were there. In his book, Herr describes a dream he had years after the war:

One night, like a piece of shrapnel that takes years to work its way out, I dreamed and saw a field that was crowded with dead. I was crossing it with a friend, more than a friend, a guide, and he was making me get down and look at them. They were powdered with dust, bloodied like it had been painted on with a wide brush, some were blown out of their pants, just like they looked that day being thrown onto the truck at Can Tho, and I said, “But I’ve already seen them.” My friend didn’t say anything, he just pointed, and I leaned down again and this time I looked into their faces. 

Herr’s image of “shrapnel that takes years to work its way out,” gives the impression that Herr’s dream is a kind of grappling with or a working through the effects of his traumatic experience.

Homer’s Odyssey tells of Odysseus’ ten year journey home to Ithaca after the ten year Trojan War. On his journey he visits and we are given a description of “The Kingdom of the Dead.” Odysseus’ experience in “The Kingdom of the Dead” seems to parallel Herr’s dream in both tone and imagery and I wonder if Odysseus experience is also a kind of working through his own war trauma.

Now the rest of the ghosts, the dead and gone
came swarming up around me — deep in sorrow there,
each asking about the grief that touched him most.

A cold encounter with the ghost of his dead friend Ajax:

Only the ghost of Great Ajax, son of Telamon,
kept his distance, blazing with anger at me still
for the victory I had won by the ships that time
I pressed my claim for the arms of Prince Achilles.

Odysseus calls out to him, but Ajax doesn't answer:

So I cried out but Ajax answered not a word.
He stalked off toward Erebus, into the dark
to join the other lost, departed dead.

On the ghost of Hercules, Odysseus sees a belt covered in grotesque battlefield images:

A terror too, that sword-belt sweeping across his chest,
a baldric of solid gold emblazoned with awesome work ...
bears and ramping boars and lions with wild, fiery eyes,
and wars, routs and battles, massacres, butchered men.
May the craftsman who forged that masterpiece —
whose skills could conjure up a belt like that —
never forge another!  

His conclusion "may the craftsman who forged that...never forge another" sounds like a kind of prayer to never have to see such horrors again.