The Meanings of Drowning in Military-Themed Art: Analyzing a Sample of Random Civilizations and Timeframes through History

摘要

Introduction: Artists have depicted drowning episodes in drawings with a religious, mythological, historical,suicidal, homicidal and military context. We aimed to identify the messages that the paintings with a drowning sceneduring a military/combat situation deliver to viewers. Method: A criterion sampling method identified paintings thatportray drowning episodes during military and combat situations (n=57). Chi-squared tests were used for comparisonbetween categorical variables. Results: Ten statistically significant differences were identified between the bystanders atthe time of occurrence (p=0.046), the bystanders by the depiction of military weapons (p=0.010), the bystanders by thenumber of casualties (p=0.049), the bystanders by the drowning stage of the casualty (p=0.014), the location by the meansof transportation (p<0.001), the location by the drowning stage (p<0.001), the water depth during the rescue attempt(p=0.012), the water depth at the time of transportation (p<0.001), the casualty characteristics by the use of militaryweapons (p=0.001) and finally the casualty number by the means of transportation (p=0.018). Conclusions: Casualtieswere portrayed to be most often military adult males that drowned at sea in deep water. They were often seen to beimmersed carrying weapons, and were witnessed by the bystanders. Art has provided us with a heritage of depictions thatportrays drowning during military or combat situations. Warriors were always depicted accurately drowning but notalways swimming. From this wealth of artistic information, we can deduce how the portrayed warriors and/or civiliansunder distress met their end or survived a drowning episode and avoided the enemy.