How can I really drive home a character not being able to hold it together in the wake of repeated trauma?

I think a reasonable response to this scenario is revolt. He kills himself the second they put a weapon in his hand. He refuses to fight at all, if that means he dies, so be it. He makes repeated attempts to kill his masters. He tries to rally his fellow captives to refuse to fight. If threatened with permanent death for refusing to comply, he accepts that and kills himself the next time they put a weapon in his hands anyway.

To me, "losing it" means losing all care about the consequences of his actions.

Actual revolutions IRL occur when people get so angry or desperate they will risk dying in battle rather than continue in their current state (especially if dying in battle presents a chance of saving children they love).

Slavery, which is what you are describing here, would not work if all the slaves would rather die than serve and thus commit suicide at any opportunity once they have decided they cannot escape servitude. In your scenario, it should be easy to convince his fellow combatants to suicide if death isn't "real" anyway. But if not, if they fear it might be permanent, he can give up and not care if any of his suicides are permanent.

Now you have a problem for how his masters react to this; for some reason or another they do not just let him stay dead (so your story doesn't end with that).

posted over 6 years ago

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Amadeus‭

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