Anti-war Literature

Over the past few weeks in my Humanities Core Course, I have attended lectures with topics being the ancient epic war of the Trojan War, the Thirty Years' War of 17th century Europe, and lately World War II. During one of Professor Smith's, a professor specializing in German studies,  lectures he played a small part of a larger video. A particular image in this video resonated with me. 

City of Dresden after massive bombing.

The image was of the city of Dresden, in the aftermath of a bombing attack. This image- this city rekindled memories of my AP English Literature class from high school. The first time I encountered the bombing of this German city was through  the novelist Kurt Vonnegut and his anti-war novel titled Slaughterhouse-Five or The Children's Crusade: A Duty Dance with Death. 

A year ago (around this time of year in fact) I read an anti-war novel. This year, I have read an anti-war play.While one was meant to be read and another watched, both of the writers' aims were the same: to challenge the masses and inspire collective action. 

Bertolt Brecht, the playwright of Mother Courage and her Children, was born in Germany in 1898. He wrote this particular play at a point in his life where he had fled Germany because: 

1. Hitler had risen to power
2. he was left-winged intellectual (believed in some aspects of Communism)

Being exiled from all you know, all that is dear to you is no easy feat. This play has (for all that Brecht tried to keep emotion out of it) tones of loss and despair. This play has been described by actress Meryl Streep as "a cry"; a cry of asking "why?" This question, however, is not part of the question "why me?" but rather "why did we let it get to this?" Brecht's play is a representation of what war is like. There is no heroism in Brecht's representation of war and there is no crushing sorrow (that is supposed to felt), there is just War. 

Kurt Vonnegut,a novelist, was an American with German ancestral roots. He fought during World War II for the Allies, was taken as a prisoner of war by the Germans, and witnessed the bombing of Dresden. The significance of the bombing of this particular city was the fact that it was purely civilian and had no fortification, no armaments to attack and defend from enemies.  It was full of women, children, those injured by the war, those too old to fight in the war, and prisoners of war. Beginning of February 13, 1915 and ending on the February 15th, Dresden was bombed by the Allied forces. 

Living though this, Vonnegut came home and had the seed of an idea for an anti-war novel. This novel may have had its roots in World War II, but it did not become a reality until the Vietnam War was well underway.  His anti-war novel, or as he liked to think of it his "anti-glacier" novel undertook the task of not recounting the horrors of war, but of pointing out the blasé attitude of the masses in times of war. 

Vonnegut felt that the American people had become desensitized to  the violence of war. During the Vietnam war, it became a standard practice to give a toll of the number of dead each night during the news. Death toll numbers, images of massacres became the norm and the violence of war was no longer monstrous or inhumane. 

By reading the novel Slaughterhouse-five I learned that the opposite of love was not hate, but rather indifference. Love and Hate are both strong emotions, they are essentially the two different sides of the same coin. Their counterpart is indifference; the lack of caring is the true horror of the generations that have followed Vonnegut's. 

What I found to be so profound in both Brecht's and Vonnegut's work was the way in which they approached the topic of war. Both of the works I discussed are considered "anti-war" yet these two men did not simply state or show that war is bad (a thought I believe, we all know deep down by our innate instincts that is true). Vonnegut attached the term "anti-glacier" for his novel since he believed "There [will] always be wars...they [are] as easy to stop as glaciers" -and we all know how the confrontation between a glacier and the Titanic went (Slaughterhouse-five. 1. 3).  However, what these writers attacked was not the evilness of war but the actions or lack of actions taken beforehand. What they aimed to inspire was collective action. 

One person alone is not enough to change the world. It is when people come together as one in action and thought that change can be accomplished. 

Personally, I know that I am too detached from war and its violence. I know many wars have started, ended, and some are still continuing in my life time. Yet, my life has been a good one. I have, or at least I believe, not been severely affected by War. The only experience I have with the military was through the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC) program at my school. And when I really think about it, but I mean pause and really think, I become ashamed. I reap the benefits of another person's labor, a person who is away from home because of a war. Then I ponder what I should do. Should I become involved? Should I join the military (my JROTC instructors believed I could have been an Officer)? Should I protest war?  

I don't really know what I should do. I am still figuring it out. I am just glad I have had teachers and professors who have introduced me to works such as Slaughterhouse-five and Mother Courage. For jolting me awake from my own apparent apathy towards War; for making me realize that something must be done. 

Sources

• Slaughterhouse-five

      Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-five or the Children's Crusade:       A Duty Dance with Death. New York: Delacorte                       Press/Seymour Lawrence, 1991.