The Literature of War

Writing Combat

The Literature of War

English 174 //Fall 2025// M, W, F 12 – 1// Physics 1

Mark Danner

War, the most destructive of human activities, long predates writing. Wounds still evident in a mesolithic African cemetery tell us that the organized practice of humans killing humans predates the institution of the state itself. Taking part in mass murder appears to be an intractable part of being human. As I write, more than sixty thousand people have died in Gaza. My father, when he was a young man, fought in a conflict that killed 85 million. Nothing so gives the lie to the notion of human progress than the inexorable fact of war — and the frank willingness of humans, embodied today in vast nuclear arsenals, to destroy the world itself rather than suffer defeat. As a reporter, I have covered war and political violence in Central America, Haiti, the Balkans, and Iraq. I have seen much death and written about it. But I have not come to understand it. In this course, we will read and discuss some of the most powerful words that have been written about war. Our inquiry will encompass epics, novels, memoirs and reportage and will stretch from the siege of Troy to the invasion of Gaza. Throughout we will focus on great writers’ attempt to understand the incomprehensible: our irresistible attraction to mass murder and destruction.

Class Requirements This class will be taught largely in lecture format, backed up by a solid amount of reading and viewing, and some writing. There will be time for questions in class and, we hope, for some discussion. The most important requirements are that students

*Attend all lectures

*Keep up with assigned reading and viewing

*Take part in discussions

*Complete one four-page midterm paper and one multi-page final examination

A student’s record of attendance, together with the quality of their writing, will determine the success of our class and contribute the better part of the grade. Students who miss multiple class sessions will not do well in this course.

Schedule Note that classes will meet Monday, Wednesday and Friday in Physics Building 1 at 12 pm. Class concludes at 1 pm.

Reading Our primary reading will draw on a series of works on war, including novels, memoirs, non-fiction studies and one epic poem. These works are listed below under Required Texts. Please obtain these books in your own copies and in the edition specified either from local bookstores or from online suppliers, so that you will be able to highlight and annotate them and so that during discussions we will all be “on the same page.”

I have also listed several secondary volumes and will likely suggest other books and articles as the class progresses. These are not required but are suggested for students wanting to supplement their primary reading.

Films We will assign some war movies during the class and I will list those below. I urge students to watch these films together, on as large a screen as you can find and in at least one full viewing without interruption.

Favorite Passages Always come to lecture with a favorite passage – anything from several sentences to a paragraph — drawn from that session’s assigned reading. Be prepared to read the passage out loud and say a few words about why you chose it.

Writing One four-page paper is required in this class and one final examination. Papers should be double-spaced, titled and paginated and handed in through bCourses by midnight of Wednesday, October 29. The prompt for the paper will be discussed in class.

The final examination will be given on Friday, December 19, from 11:30 am to 2:30 pm at a location to be announced. This exam, a combination of short answer and short essays, will be intended to assess your familiarity with and comprehension of the reading and the lectures.

To bolster the clarity and vigor of your prose, I strongly suggest reading or re-reading George Orwell’s essay, “Politics and the English Language,” which is easily found on the web. Strunk and White’s little manual, The Elements of Style is also very useful and highly recommended.

Artificial Intelligence ChatGPT and other AI are not permitted in writing the paper or elsewhere in our course work.

Office Hours I will be holding office hours most Friday afternoons, between 1:30 and 3 pm, usually at Abe’s Café, 1842 Euclid Avenue, just to the north of campus. Course assistant Claire Runze Wu – clairerwu@berkeley.edu – will begin to schedule via a sign up sheet on bCourse two weeks into the semester. You are welcome to come talk to me about the class, the reading, your career — or anything else of interest. Which is to say: You don’t need a specific class-based reason to come to office hours. I urge you to come at least once during the semester.

My writing and speaking and syllabi for past courses can be found on my website, www.markdanner.com

Course Readers Our course readers are Hamza Abdel Fahmy —hamfahm@berkely.edu — who will hold office hours on Mondays at 3 – 5 pm at Wheeler 309, and Annabelle Littlejohn-Bailey- alittlejohnbailey@berkeley.edu – for whose office hours you can sign up at this link. These arrangements will be discussed in the first class as well.

Grading Students will be graded on their attendance and participation in class, the strength of their written work, and the quality of their final exam, as follows:

Attendance 20 percent

Midterm Paper 35 percent

Final Examination 45 percent

Required Texts

Anonymous, A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in Conquered City (Picador, 2000)

Mark Danner, The Massacre at El Mozote (Vintage, 1994)

Euripides, Trojan Women, trans. Alan Shapiro (Oxford, 2009 [415 BC])

Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (Ecco, 2012)

Michael Herr, Dispatches (Vintage, 1991)

John Hersey, Hiroshima (Vintage, 1989 [1946])

Homer, The Iliad, trans. Emily Wilson (Norton, 2023 [c 700 BC])

Primo Levi, If This Is A Man (Abacus, 2003)

Sven Lindqvist, A History of Bombing (New Press, 2003)

Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried (Mariner, 2009 [1990])

Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front (Vintage, 1994 [1929])

Required Films

Michael Cacoyannis, The Trojan Women (1971)

Francis Ford Coppola, Apocalypse Now (1979)

Stanley Kubrick, Paths of Glory (1957)

Stanley Kubrick, Dr. Strangelove (1964)

Gillo Pontecorvo, Battle of Algiers (1966)

Steven Spielberg, Saving Private Ryan (1998)

Oliver Stone, Salvador (1986)

Michael Ware, Only the Dead (2015)

Syllabus

September 3, 2025 – The Literature of War, An Introduction

War, the most destructive of human activities, long predates writing. Wounds evident in a Mesolithic African cemetery tell us that organized killing predates the state itself. As I write, more than sixty thousand people have died in Gaza. Nothing so gives the lie to human progress than the inexorable fact of war and our frank willingness to destroy the world rather than suffer defeat. In this course, we will read some of the most powerful words written about war, stretching from the siege of Troy to the invasion of Gaza, focusing on great writers’ attempts to understand our irresistible attraction to mass murder and destruction.

War has killed 231 million people in the 20th century alone. The Vietnam War killed 58,000 Americans. War goes back further than literature—12,000 years with bodies showing war wounds. The greatest scientific triumph of the last century was splitting the atom, done in the interest of killing vast numbers of people efficiently. The Trinity test in 1945 led to the bombing of Hiroshima within three weeks, killing more than 100,000 people. Under 13,000 nuclear weapons exist today, 90% belonging to Russia and the United States. Is war somehow inherent to human nature? War is part of existence we don’t necessarily think about, but it is a constant.

Poems: Simonides, “Go Tell the Spartans” (trans. William Lisle Bowles); “Tell them in Lacedaemon,” Herodotus; Ode of Horace (trans. A.S. Kline; trans. John Conington); Wilfred Owen, “Dulce et Decorum Est”; Mosab Abu Toha, “We Deserve a Better Death”

The People’s War – Insurgency and Massacre

September 5 — Read: Mark Danner, The Massacre at El Mozote (Vintage, 1994), pp. 3 – 84.

Notes: Danner raises questions about whether it is possible to fight a humane war. In Gaza, 5 out of 6 deaths are civilian. The book attempts to set up accountability through American aid, but the administration denies the massacre happened and preserves aid anyway. Dehumanization is necessary to war—depicting the enemy as less than human allows killing. Under the law of war, killing civilians is legal only in proportionate numbers to military objectives. Armies eventually conclude that killing civilians loses wars because counter-insurgency is fought for civilian allegiance. The more civilians killed, the more recruits the other side gains.

Poem: Carolyn Forché “The Colonel”

September 6 – Apocalypse Now: Final Cut screening, BAMPFA, 3:30 pm

September 8 – Read: Mark Danner, The Massacre at El Mozote (Vintage, 1994), 85 – 161 and Appendices.

Watch: Oliver Stone, Salvador (1986)

Notes: In the 1980s Salvador war, Democrats controlling Congress tried to make the war more humane. The Democratic Congress passed a law requiring the Salvadoran government to improve its human rights performance in order to receive military aid. The massacre at El Mozote happened within just a month and a half of the first certification being due to Congress. If the massacre had been proven to have occurred, aid might have been cut off, and the Salvadoran government would have almost certainly lost the war. We cannot understand the Salvadoran Civil War without reference to the Cold War—both sides fought it as if their regimes depended on it.

War of Epics, War of Heroes

September 10 – Read: Homer, The Iliad, trans. Emily Wilson (Norton, 2023), pp. 1 – 96.

Notes: The Iliad is a poem that was sung, emerging from hundreds of years of oral composition. The written version was probably transcribed around 750-700 BCE, while the events described likely happened around 1200-1100 BCE—a gap of 500 years. The Iliad covers 51 days in a 10-year war, focusing on the anger of Achilles and the death of Hector. The poem contains 240 named warrior deaths plus countless anonymous ones. Achilles knows he is fated to die young but chooses glory over a long life, making honor vital to his identity. This aristocratic warrior ethos meant that social position depended entirely on martial glory and honor.

September 12 – Read: Homer, The Iliad, trans. Emily Wilson (Norton, 2023), pp. 97 – 222.

Notes: The Greeks are beaten back to their ships as the Trojans, aided by Zeus, advance. Hector visits his family, where his wife Andromache pleads him to protect Troy’s walls, but he feels shame in retreating and must fight. His young son fears his father’s helmet; Hector removes it to embrace the child, aware this may be their last meeting. Unlike Achilles, Hector embodies civic virtue—he is a family man, city protector, and responsible citizen. Paris receives heavy criticism for running away with Helen rather than fighting. The gods remain partisan: Aphrodite and Hera/Athena oppose each other. The kleos apthititon (everlasting glory) drives the heroes, while Homeric similes bring ordinary life into the epic’s violent narrative.

September 15 – Read: Homer, The Iliad, trans. Emily Wilson (Norton, 2023), pp. 223 – 348.

Notes Hector has an aristeia (performance of excellence) aided by Zeus; the Greeks suffer disasters defending their ships. The poem’s geometric structure mirrors Books 1 and 24, with the Great Battle at the center reflecting the embassy to Achilles. Helen reflects on Zeus making her a symbol of war, suggesting determinism, yet characters possess immediate free will within fate’s framework. Achilles maintains “personal integrity” achieving “immanent divinity,” inhuman in his austerity and uncompromising honor. The poem evolves toward Achilles’ humanity: he chooses to fight, replacing rage with empathy when Priam ransoms Hector’s body. By the end, Achilles becomes more human through suffering and connection.

September 17 – Read: Homer, The Iliad, trans. Emily Wilson (Norton, 2023), pp. 349 – 462.

Notes The ekphrasis (description of visual art) appears in Achilles’ shield, crafted by Hephaestus to show the cosmos: cities at peace, dancing, farming, justice, and the ocean rim. W.H. Auden’s poem “Shield of Achilles” contrasts Homer’s world with modernist emptiness—industrial killing, barbed wire, executions, meaningless marching. The shield embodies the totality of human experience, yet Achilles won’t experience it; violence remains essential to this vision. Achilles becomes godlike, an inhuman killing machine before his humanity emerges. The shield’s beauty alongside warfare’s brutality raises questions: is violence integral to cosmic order, or is Achilles’ relentless killing the heroic principle reduced to essence?

Poem: W.H. Auden, “Shield of Achilles”

September 19 – Read: Homer, The Iliad, trans. Emily Wilson (Norton, 2023), pp. 463 – 610.

Suggested: Cedric Whitman, Homer and the Heroic Tradition (1965)

Notes The embassy offers Achilles vast gifts but fails because Agamemnon demands submission, which Achilles refuses. Achilles rejects the heroic bargain: wealth, women, and status cannot compensate for life itself. His honor comes from Zeus, not from Agamemnon’s gifts—it’s God-given, not purchasable. By novel’s end, Achilles has determined to fight (and thus die), choosing mortality over life. Unlike tragedy’s fixed characters, the epic allows change; Achilles making himself is unusual. The first word “menin” (rage) is applied to gods, signaling divine intensity; Achilles later replaces rage with empathy through Priam’s grief. His nobility stands alone, uncompromising, requiring suffering as mortals accept what gods do not.

September 22 – Read: Euripides, Trojan Woman, trans. Alan Shapiro (Oxford, 2009), pp. 31 – 78.

Notes Euripides produced this anti-war play in 415 BCE during the Peloponnesian War while Athens prepared invasion of Sicily. Poseidon and Athena prologize: Troy is sacked, Cassandra raped in Athena’s temple, desecrating it; gods promise Greeks suffering on their voyage home. Victory proves hollow; might doesn’t guarantee right in the play’s metaphysics. The play shifts from epic’s aristocratic warriors to women’s suffering, showing war’s civilian victims. Scholars debate whether this responds to the Melian Dialogue: “the strong do what they will, the weak suffer what they must.” The play didn’t win first prize; perhaps Athenians disliked facing their own cruelty.

September 24 – Read: Euripides, Trojan Woman, trans. Alan Shapiro (Oxford, 2009), pp. 31 – 78.

Watch: Michael Cacoyannis, The Trojan Women (1971)

Notes The 1971 film, produced during the Vietnam War, stars Vanessa Redgrave, an anti-war activist. Six women embody different responses: Hecuba (queen become slave), Cassandra (knows the future, will help kill Agamemnon), Andromache (lost husband Hector, faces new life), and Helen (defended herself, blamed gods). Cassandra’s wedding ritual paradoxically celebrates future Greek downfall; she remains fighting the war. The episodic structure presents facets of brutalization without advancing plot. Dramatic irony pervades: the audience knows the future just as Cassandra does. Laws of war are ambiguous: killing Priam at the altar violates sacred custom; killing Astyanax prevents dynasty’s return—was it a crime before international law existed?

Modern Industrial Warfare

September 26 – Read: Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front (Vintage, 1994 [1929]), pp. 1 – 68.

Notes Remarque’s 1929 novel depicts trench warfare’s dehumanization: soldiers become animals trapped in mud, with artillery shells constantly detonating overhead. WWI changed warfare through attrition—massive manpower battles where hundreds of thousands died with minimal territorial gain. The films show soldiers as trapped, unable to move, throwing themselves against machine guns. Paul describes psychological transformation under fire: ordinary faces become altered as adrenaline sharpens senses; men become cruel animals seeking outlets for fury. Unlike the Iliad, there’s no exultation—soldiers are “dead men with no feelings” mechanically killing. Chance governs survival, not honor: awareness of chance breeds indifference.

September 29 – Read: Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front (Vintage, 1994 [1929]), pp. 69 – 136.

Notes Helen in Euripides differs from Homer’s gentle portrayal: she’s a survivor fighting for life, claiming gods controlled her. Determinism versus freedom tensions persist across all works. The novel marks modernism’s beginning—the Wasteland (1921) depicts post-WWI desiccation; All Quiet (1929) reveals war’s reality to civilians. Germany faced chaos post-war, political violence, reparations, territorial loss—conditions enabling Nazi rise. The book was banned and burned by Nazis; Goebbels burned it publicly as anti-German. Remarque’s delayed publication (ten years post-war) reflects Lost Generation preoccupations: why are survivors damaged? The gap between front and home is unbridgeable—those at home believed propaganda while soldiers knew only death.

October 1 – Read: Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front (Vintage, 1994 [1929]), pp. 137 – 200.

Suggested: CS Forester, The General (1936)

Watch: Stanley Kubrick, Paths of Glory (1957)

Notes Paul observes Russian POWs: orders make enemies; different orders make friends—war’s arbitrariness depends on paperwork signed by unknown people. He contemplates dedicating post-war life to preventing war, embodying utopian hope that if “the war to end all wars” succeeds, its horrors justify survival. This hope founders when Nazis rise; survivors often became Stormtroopers, channeling war trauma into fascism. Paths of Glory depicts a true story: French generals order suicidal charges to boost careers; soldiers are executed for cowardice despite one officer refusing to shoot his own men. Remarque’s book came out when modernity seemed progressive, then collapsed into barbarism.

Mass Murder: War as Genocide

October 3 – Read: Primo Levi, If This Is A Man (Abacus, 2003), 15 – 61.

Notes Levi’s account of Auschwitz shows industrialized killing: 650 people arrived; 125 became workers, 525 died immediately. The camp was a factory producing death and work for chemical plants. A million Jews died there, plus millions of others. Selection happened periodically: SS sorted prisoners; chosen ones died soon after. Ideology made killing possible: racial hierarchies positioned Jews and Slavs as subhuman, justifying liquidation. Hitler’s Mein Kampf explicitly stated intent. Mobile killing units following the German army east shot 750,000; emotional toll on killers prompted the switch to gas chambers.

October 6 – Read: Primo Levi, If This Is A Man (Abacus, 2003), 62 – 106.

Notes Levi’s opening poem “If This Is A Man” questions what defines humanity in extremity. The “drowned” (Musselmen) are those overcome by the camp’s system—barely alive, forming the camp’s backbone as anonymous non-men. Survivors needed special attributes (skills like chemistry), close friendships, and humanity-preserving practices. Steinlauf tells Levi that washing maintains dignity and the refusal to consent to the camp’s machinery—one must withhold humanity’s acceptance of dehumanization. The last ten days after SS evacuation differ from routine: prisoners work together melting snow, tending sick, sharing bread—returning to human behavior. Levi was one of 20 survivors from 750 on his transport.

Poem: Primo Levi, If This Is a Man

October 8– Read: Primo Levi, If This Is A Man (Abacus, 2003), 107 – 179.

Watch: Steven Spielberg, Saving Private Ryan (1998)

Read: Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men (Harper, 1992), excerpts

Suggested: William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960); Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men (1992) in full; Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1899); Samantha Power, A Problem from Hell (2002)

Notes The genocide convention defines genocide by intent to destroy a national/ethnic/racial/religious group wholly or partly. The U.S. was reluctant to invoke it because doing so obligated action; during Bosnia and Rwanda, the U.S. denied genocide to avoid obligations. Browning’s Ordinary Men examines a German police battalion that shot 83,000 Jews: the commander allowed those unwilling to shoot to withdraw, yet most participated. Interviewees claimed they were compelled or felt peer pressure. The book raises difficult questions: what would ordinary people do under such pressure? After liberation, Levi worked and wrote at night, finishing his account ten months later (1947). He wrote the final ten days first—a period of agency unusual in camp life. As the SS evacuated 20,000 prisoners on death marches (all killed), Levi and the sick remained. The ten days involved human behavior: melting snow, tending sick, working cooperatively—returning to humanity. Levi remained emaciated, unrecognizable; he decided to bear witness.

October 10 – Read: Anonymous, A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City (Picador, 2000), pp. 1 – 90.

Notes The author (a journalist, died 2001) documents Berlin’s fall under Russian occupation. German women experienced mass rape: estimated 100,000 in Berlin during weeks of assault. After initial random attacks, she found a protector (officer), establishing a quasi-relationship involving food exchange. The author questions whether she’s prostituting herself. The community aspect distinguishes this from individual crime: all Berlin women experienced it, abortion became quietly permissible despite being illegal. Rape is warfare’s persistent tool for dehumanizing enemies and destroying morale.

October 13 – Read: Anonymous, A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City (Picador, 2000), pp. 90 – 181.

Notes We move to the civilian world of Germans in World War II. In Primo Levi’s memoir, he works in a chemical laboratory making synthetic rubber, emaciated and in striped rags, and asks a secretary a question. She ignores him, turns to the supervisor, and says distinctly “stinking Jew,” immediately setting him outside the frame of humanity she occupies. What does this young woman think of these dying people, and how does she justify what is happening? She sits almost in view of the crematorium chimney. A Woman in Berlin shows this as a community crime happening to everybody, not an individual one—the whole society experiences it. Abortion is illegal but society quietly permits it given the assault that occurred. There is a distinction between the violence at the beginning and what happens later, where women find “protectors” who are higher in military rank.

October 15 – Read: Anonymous, A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City (Picador, 2000), pp. 182 – 261.

Suggested: Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Own Will: Men, Women, and Rape (1975); Vladimir Gefland, Diaries of Vladimir Gefland (1946)

Notes Homo homini lupus”—man is wolf to man—captures predation, but the book’s mixed message shows collapse alongside survival. Society degrades into clan/cave-dweller existence: bread is king, gold worthless, scavenging replaces economy. Yet compensatory communal life emerges in air raid shelters. Bombing dominates the war’s final phase: the U.S./UK dropped 8x WWII tonnage on Germany; area bombing killed 600,000 civilians. Rules of engagement permitting such killing remain debated; proportionality to military objective is required but elastic. The author describes physical fear during bombardment—visceral terror of potential death.

Apocalypse: Strategic Bombing and Nuclear Holocaust

October 17 – Read: John Hersey, Hiroshima (Vintage, 1989 [1946]), pp. 1 – 90.

Notes Hersey, age 31, traveled to Hiroshima in May 1946 and interviewed survivors, selecting six as point-of-view characters. Hiroshima pioneered New Journalism—writing truth through literary methods. The U.S. Army suppressed information, claiming radiation sickness was rumor. Hersey’s article (entire New Yorker issue, August 31, 1946) shocked the political establishment. Einstein ordered 1,000 reprints; the book has sold 3.5 million copies—probably the most influential journalism ever published. The establishment feared it would undermine nuclear weapons policy. Secretary of War Henry Stimson published a defense arguing the bomb saved a million American casualties from invasion.

October 20 – Read: John Hersey, Hiroshima (Vintage, 1989 [1946]), pp. 91 – 152.

Notes Hersey’s technique involves interviews with survivors, pushing them to remember concrete details—sensations, sights, sounds—from early August 1945. Six characters cross paths; Hersey “auditioned” subjects for narrative intersections. The prose is matter-of-fact, neutral, lacking emotional valence; yet this neutrality makes horror more striking. The bomb devastated medical care, killing doctors and nurses; radiation continued killing survivors. When the first sentence ends, 100,000 are dead. Hersey reports rather than argues; the facts speak. The fifth chapter (added 1985) briefly considers broader issues but doesn’t debate whether dropping the bomb was justified.

October 22 – Read: Sven Lindqvist, A History of Bombing (New Press, 2003), “Bang, You’re Dead” through (and including) “Bombed Into Savagery”

Notes Lindqvist’s A History of Bombing is creative nonfiction—factual but structured as drama, juxtaposing facts to shock readers. Bombing originated in colonial wars: Italians dropped hand grenades in Libya (1911), British bombed Iraq, Italians bombed Ethiopia—all on undefended civilians deemed acceptable because they were colonized peoples. This differs from European bombing, initially illegal under international law. By WWII, hundreds of thousands died in European cities from area bombing; these techniques—perfected colonially—returned to Europe. Lindqvist argues colonial violence birthed twentieth-century mass killing. Guernica (1937) shocked Europe—first terror bombing of a European city killing thousands. The author avoids linear history, creating intersecting paths so readers discover connections.

October 24 – Read: Sven Lindqvist, A History of Bombing (New Press, 2003),

Section “The Law and the Prophets” through (and including) “Hiroshima”

Notes When Hiroshima was published, the U.S. developed nuclear policy as defense strategy’s foundation—thousands of weapons on nuclear triad (bombers, land-based, sea-based missiles). Stimson’s 1947 Harper’s article defended the bomb: invasion’s casualties would exceed 1 million Americans; the bomb’s shock was necessary to extract Japanese surrender. This argument remains debated; revisionists argued the bomb wasn’t necessary and the U.S. aimed to intimidate the Soviet Union post-war. Either way, Hiroshima marks entrance into the nuclear era: 13,000 weapons exist globally. Nine nuclear powers exist; some are undeclared. Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain the only wartime nuclear uses.

October 27 – Read: Sven Lindqvist, A History of Bombing (New Press, 2003), “Living with the Superweapon” through (and including) “Nothing Human”

Watch: Stanley Kubrick, Dr. Strangelove

Notes The book progresses through history non-linearly, creating a forest where readers wander intersecting paths. Major themes: aerial bombardment’s growth, colonialism’s violence, international humanitarian law’s development, and racism’s role. Colonialism created bifurcated rules: certain treatment for European equals, different for colonized peoples. When bombing was perfected colonially and brought to Europe, it became accepted despite earlier prohibitions. Science fiction novels reveal cultural fantasies: fears of colonized peoples retaliating with mass killing, utopian hopes that terrible weapons prevent war. Dr. Strangelove satirizes nuclear strategy’s theological abstraction. We live under nuclear regime; submarines and bombers patrol constantly with weapons ready to launch.

The Cascading Dilemmas of Vietnam

October 29 – Read: Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried (Mariner, 2009 [1990]), pp. 1 – 81.

Notes O’Brien blurs fact and fiction: the book reads like memoir but is largely invented; “story-truth” (emotional truth through fiction) sometimes conveys greater truth than “happening-truth” (factual events). The title refers both to physical gear soldiers carry and emotional/psychological weight they bear. War’s lies are expected—officials constantly misrepresent; Truman called Hiroshima “a military base.” A group of historians identified the atomic bomb as the century’s greatest achievement—contradictory because it achieved unparalleled destruction. Japanese-Americans were interned while Japanese were heavily bombed; racial difference mattered in WWII targeting strategies. The novel engages with Vietnam through fictional characters and O’Brien’s own experience: drafted in 1969, he nearly fled to Canada but couldn’t overcome shame.

Four-Page Midterm Paper Due. Papers should be double-spaced, titled and paginated and handed in through bCourses by midnight, October 29.

The prompt for this paper will be discussed in class.

October 31 – Read: Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried (Mariner, 2009 [1990]), pp. 82 –170. (Apocalypse Now: Final Cut screening, BAMPFA, 6:30 pm)

Notes Randall Jarrell’s “The Death of Ball Turret Gunner” depicts bombers’ vulnerability: ball-turret gunners hung exposed in plexiglass bubbles; 38% of American air crews survived in Europe. The shocking final line—”washed me out of the turret with a hose”—treats the body as refuse. “I fell into the State” suggests involuntary conscription; war is “separate” from normal life. Cold War deterrence prevented US-Soviet direct conflict; instead proxy wars (Korea, Vietnam) were fought through third parties. Vietnam was an insurgency: Viet Cong and NVA blended with civilians; no front line; death came from hidden sources. Soldiers couldn’t identify the enemy or understand their cause.

November 3 – Read: Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried (Mariner, 2009 [1990]), pp. 171 – 233.

Notes O’Brien explicitly states: “almost everything else is invented” except his experience as a soldier. He killed a man accidentally—or did he? The ambiguity between “happening-truth” (he didn’t kill deliberately) and “story-truth” (imagining killing to feel guilt) illustrates the novel’s central concern. Memory is unreliable, especially under fire. Twenty years later, grief and guilt remain; the story-truth of having killed allows him to process complex responsibility. Self-reflexivity characterizes post-modern fiction: questioning truth, identity, narration. The moral current running through the book concerns ethical pathways through war: soldiers die from embarrassment, not noble cause.

November 5 – Read: Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried (Mariner, 2009 [1990])

Notes Tim O’Brien received a draft notice in 1968, accepted to Harvard but couldn’t flee due to shame. Hector’s Dilemma frames the Vietnam decision: fight a war you despise or accept embarrassment/jail. Vietnam ostensibly concerned credibility with allies and containing communism; actually, it prolonged Western colonialism. John Kerry asked “what man wants to be the last man to die for a lie?”

November 7 – Read: Michael Herr, Dispatches (Vintage, 1991), pp. 3 – 85.

Notes Herr’s Dispatches applies New Journalism 30 years after Hiroshima; mixing reportage with novelistic technique, truth becomes malleable. “War is Hell… and mystery, terror, adventure, courage… and beauty” captures the sublime: awe-inspiring yet terrifying. Herr “kept the dead alive with stories”; the book’s final third focuses on keeping deceased friends present through narrative.

November 10 – Veterans Day, No Class

November 12 – Read: Michael Herr, Dispatches (Vintage, 1991), pp. 86 – 186.

Watch: Francis Ford Coppola, Apocalypse Now (1979)

Notes A poem by Ngo Vinh Long: “each blade of grass is human hair / each foot of soil is human flesh” captures Vietnam’s death toll—millions killed. Eight times WWII’s tonnage was dropped on Vietnam; the Plain of Jars in Laos remains cratered, littered with unexploded ordnance. Vietnamese perspective differs from American focus on U.S. deaths; Americans wrote about their war while Vietnamese lived its consequences permanently. Herr was correspondent for Esquire, traveling with troops for 18 months. Dispatches (published 1977) pioneered New Journalism. Some characters are composite; dialogues endlessly rewritten. Herr admits fictional aspects but claims “everything happened to me, even if not necessarily to me.”

November 14 — Read: Michael Herr, Dispatches (Vintage, 1991), pp. 187 – 260.

Notes The Siege of Khe Sanh showed military claims were false; AP reporting emphasized American firepower but didn’t question the narrative. Herr’s account reveals consciousness itself—fear, adrenaline, beauty of incoming fire, terror lurking beneath. AP represents objective journalism; Herr practices consciousness journalism (subjective, self-examining). The Tet Offensive (1968) militarily defeated the Viet Cong but politically defeated America. After years claiming victory, simultaneous attacks shocked Americans into realizing official narratives were lies. This credibility gap persists: before Vietnam, 70-80% trusted government; now below 40%. Journalists’ ability to go anywhere revealed the gap between 5:00 briefings and battlefield reality. The Pentagon lost narrative control.

Debacle in the Desert: The Iraq War

November 17 — Read: Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (Ecco, 2012), pp. 1 – 73.

Watch: Michael Ware, Only the Dead (2015)

Notes The Iraq War was supposed to last months but became years. The government predicted liberation-style reception but faced insurgency. IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) became the primary weapon; survivors suffered traumatic brain injuries. When vehicles were blown up, insurgents would pop up and attack; if they had cameras (filming for propaganda), soldiers shot them. The Iraq War created ISIS: insurgent groups using Al Qaeda tactics but eventually breaking away. Only the Dead vividly depicts the war. The U.S. misunderstood counter-insurgency: killing civilians recruits more insurgents; every family member becomes motivated by revenge.

November 19 – Read: Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (Ecco, 2012), pp. 74 – 138.

Read: Mark Danner, “Delusions in Baghdad,” New York Review of Books, https://markdanner.com/2003/12/18/delusions-in-baghdad/

Notes Ben Fountain is a lawyer-turned-writer; Billy Lynn examines Iraq War’s social impact rather than combat direct. The novel takes place Thanksgiving during a Dallas Cowboys game; Bravo Squad is celebrated as heroes via halftime spectacle. The setting is commercial: Jumbo Tron showing their combat footage interspersed with ads. They’re essentially consumed as products—patriotism commodified. Hollywood figures want to make their story into a film; negotiations about money and narrative control dominate. Unlike Vietnam’s draft (conscription affecting all classes), Iraq’s all-volunteer force meant soldiers chose service after 9/11. Most recruits were poor/working-class—socioeconomic divisions reflect who fights.

November 21 – Read: Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (Ecco, 2012), pp. 139 – 216.

Notes Bruce Weigl’s “Song on Napalm” portrays PTSD: a soldier returns home, loves his wife, yet can’t escape visions of a napalmed girl. “For my wife” dedication shows his attempt to build normal life, but trauma intrudes. “The lie works only as long as it takes to speak / and the girl runs only as far as the napalm allows”—no redemption through imagination. Michael Herr’s Dispatches similarly haunts: he came back from Vietnam in 1969, fell into deep depression, didn’t finish the book until 1977. The book expresses trauma: a war where enemies are invisible, causes unclear, home doesn’t understand, where napalm burns people alive.

November 24 – Read: Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (Ecco, 2012), pp. 217 – 287.

Watch: Gillo Pontecorvo, Battle of Algiers

Notes “We Deserve a Better Death” by Mosab Abu Toha (Palestinian poet writing about Gaza) echoes the Spartan epitaph’s formal structure but reverses its meaning: rather than heroic obedience, it describes disfigured bodies, mispronounced names, rotting corpses. An epitaph from the dead’s perspective; no notion of sacrifice or honor, only killing without cause. When Gaza rubble clears, many more bodies will be discovered; the death toll remains uncertain because countless bodies lie under debris. The formal resemblance between the two epitaphs shows how different messages emerge from the same poetic form: one celebrates order and obedience, the other protests meaningless death. Battle of Algiers shows insurgency dynamics: the French won the battle but lost the war.

Poem: Mosab Abu Toha, We Deserve a Better Death,

December 1 – Read: Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (Ecco, 2012), pp. 288 – 307.

Notes Ben Fountain wrote that the halftime show seemed like “an acid trip extravaganza” featuring Destiny’s Child and uniformed troops—”exactly the kind of insanity at which my country so proudly excelled.” The 2004 Dallas Cowboys game inspired the novel; spectacle consumption of war parallels All Quiet’s alienation when Paul returns home. Both novels show civilians’ certainty contrasted with soldiers’ confusion; both depict unbridgeable gaps between home and war. Advertising/media dominate Billy Lynn; commodity culture absorbs everything including patriot soldiers. The novel’s major theme: monetization—how capitalism transforms young soldiers into marketable objects.

December 3 – Read: Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (Ecco, 2012)

Notes Trojan Women was obviously commenting about current events and the Peloponnesian War, saying profoundly critical things about war and victory. Euripides is seeing not the glory of war but above all suffering, looking at family members and wives suffering from loss of their families, and the incredible cruelty of war—the death of Astyanax, Hector’s young child, who is killed. In All Quiet, the Iron Youth—teenagers and young adults told they would win the war—find this untrue when reaching the front, suffering in trenches and shells rather than animated by nationalism. Randomness is important in WWI trench warfare: you could be talking to friends and return to find them dead. When Paul comes back from leave, he is unable to talk about it; only those who experienced it with him can understand.

December 5 – War and Its Literature: What Have We Gained?

Notes How does the anonymous author of A Woman in Berlin protect herself? She has to sell her body and finds a protector (an officer), establishing a quasi-relationship involving food exchange. She questions whether she’s prostituting herself. The community aspect distinguishes this from individual crime: all Berlin women experienced it, abortion became quietly permissible despite being illegal. John Hersey derives his technique in Hiroshima from the novel, initiating New Journalism. The U.S. dropped the bomb on Japan because invasion would cause as many as a million American casualties. Bombing was first practiced in North Africa; aerial bombardment first reached Europe in Guernica, causing an enormous stir. The last century had the most people die from warfare; nine nations now have nuclear bombs.

December 19 – FINAL EXAMINATION, 11:30 am – 2:30 pm, Location to be announced

Mark Danner

The Literature of War

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