Men At War: What Fiction Tells us About Conflict, From The Iliad to Catch-22

336 Pages·2014·1.18 MB·English

by  Christopher Coker

MEN AT WAR
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CHRISTOPHER COKER
Men at War
What Fiction Tells Us About Conflict,
from The Iliad to Catch-22
A
A
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Copyright © 2014 Christopher Coker
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Published in the United Kingdom in 2014 by C. Hurst & Co. (Publishers) Ltd.
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without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available for this title
Coker, Christopher
Men at War
ISBN 978-0-19938-297-2 (hardback)
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in India
on Acid-Free Paper
CONTENTS
1. AN ABSOLUTE TRUTH 1
2. WARRIORS 15
Achilles—The Iliad, Homer 23
Aeneas—The Aeneid, Virgil 37
Hadji Murat—Hadji Murat, Leo Tolstoy 46
‘Lucky Jack’ Aubrey—Aubrey–Maturin Series,
Patrick O’Brian 55
Vollmer—Human Moments in World War III,
Don DeLillo 62
3. HEROES 69
Henry Fleming—The Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane 77
Brigadier Gerard—The Complete Brigadier Gerard,
Arthur Conan Doyle 87
Bourne—Her Privates We, Frederic Manning 95
Robert Jordan—For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway 107
Malaparte—Kaputt, Curzio Malaparte 118
4. VILLAINS 127
Colonel Feraud—The Duel, Joseph Conrad 132
Colonel Moredock—The Confidence Man, Herman Melville 141
General Cummings—The Naked and the Dead,
Norman Mailer 149
Dr Strangelove—Dr Strangelove, Stanley Kubrick 162
Judge Holden—Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy 174
5. SURVIVORS 187
Falstaff—Henry IV, Parts I and II, William Shakespeare 192
v
CONTENTS
Švejk—The Good Soldier Švejk, Jaroslav Hašek 205
Yossarian—Catch-22, Joseph Heller 213
Kien—The Sorrow of War, Bao Ninh 224
Flashman—‘The Flashman Papers’, George McDonald
Fraser 232
6. VICTIMS 243
Philoctetes—Philoctetes, Sophocles 248
Colonel Chabert—Colonel Chabert, Honoré de Balzac 257
Paul Baumer—All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria
Remarque 265
Guy Crouchback—Sword of Honour, Evelyn Waugh 272
Billy Pilgrim—Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut 286
7. WAR IS KIND: A FINAL SUMMING UP 297
Bibliography 303
Index 313
vi
Human nature—does it develop except by its power of observing itself?
E. M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel, 1927
Like many animals characters seem to be threatened with extinction. But in
reality the world is swarming with them, one has only to invent them in order
to see them. Whether they are malicious or comical, it is better if they don’t
vanish from the face of the earth.
Elias Canetti, The Secret Heart of the Clock, 1989
I expect [the novelist] to show me Man as he always is in the man of today, my
contemporary—and vice versa, to show me my contemporary in Man as he
always is. …. [He] should have no plans for educating me, but should leave me
to reflect (or not) on the basis of the portrait with which I am presented.
Karl Barth
vii
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A NOTE ON REFERENCES
The books in which each character appears are referenced by title and
page number only. Full mention of the editions used can be found in
the bibliography.
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