War novel

Awar novelormilitary fictionis a novel about war. It is a novel in which the primary action takes place on a battlefield, or in a civilian setting (orhome front), where the characters are preoccupied with the preparations for, suffering the effects of, or recovering from war. Many war novels arehistorical novels.

Origins

Battle of Waterloo1815

The war novel's origins are in theepic poetryof theclassicalandmedievalperiods, especiallyHomer'sThe Iliad,Virgil'sThe Aeneid,sagaslike theOld EnglishBeowulf,andArthurian literature.All of these epics were concerned with preserving the history ormythologyof conflicts between different societies, while providing an accessible narrative that could reinforce thecollective memoryof a people. Other important influences on the war novel included thetragediesof dramatists such asEuripides,Seneca the Younger,Christopher Marlowe,andShakespeare.Euripides'The Trojan Womenis a powerfully disturbing play on the theme of war's horrors, apparently critical of Athenian imperialism.^[1]Shakespeare'sHenry V,which focuses on events immediately before and after theBattle of Agincourt(1415) during theHundred Years' War,provides a model for how the history,tactics,and ethics of war could be combined in an essentially fictional framework.RomancesandsatiresinEarly Modern Europe,likeEdmund Spenser's epic poemThe Faerie QueeneandMiguel de Cervantes's novelDon Quixote,to name but two, also contain elements that influenced the later development of war novels. In terms ofimageryandsymbolism,many modern war novels (especially those espousing ananti-warviewpoint) are influenced byDante's depiction ofHellin theInferno,John Milton's account of the war inHeaveninParadise Lost,and theApocalypseas depicted in the biblicalBook of Revelation.A notable non-western example of war novel isLuo Guanzhong'sRomance of the Three Kingdoms.

As the realistic form of the novel rose to prominence in the seventeenth century, the war novel began to develop its modern form, although most novels featuring war werepicaresquesatires rather than truly realistic portraits of war. An example of one such work isHans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen'sSimplicius Simplicissimus,a semi-autobiographical account of theThirty Years' War.

19th century war novels

The war novel came of age during the nineteenth century, with works likeStendhal'sThe Charterhouse of Parma(1839), which features theBattle of Waterloo,Leo Tolstoy'sWar and Peace(1869), about theNapoleonic Warsin Russia, andStephen Crane'sThe Red Badge of Courage(1895), which deals with theAmerican Civil War.All of these works feature realistic depictions of major battles, scenes of wartime horror and atrocities, and significant insights into the nature of heroism and cowardice, as well as the exploration of moral questions.

World War I and World War II

World War I produced an unprecedented number of war novels, by writers from countries on all sides of the conflict. One of the first and most influential of these was the 1916 novelLe Feu(orUnder Fire) by the French novelist and soldierHenri Barbusse.Barbusse's novel, with its open criticism of nationalist dogma and military incompetence, initiated the anti-war movement in literature that flourished after the war.

Of equal significance is the autobiographical work ofErnst Jünger,In Stahlgewittern(1920) (Storm of Steel). Distinctly different from novels like Barbusse's and laterErich Maria Remarque'sIm Westen nichts Neues(All Quiet on the Western Front), Jünger instead writes of the war as a valiant hero who embraced combat and brotherhood in spite of the horror. The work not only provides for an under-represented perspective of the War, but it also gives insight into the German sentiment that they were never actually defeated in the First World War.

The post-1918 period produced a vast range of war novels, including such "home front" novels asRebecca West'sThe Return of the Soldier(1918), about ashell shockedsoldier's difficult re-integration into British society;Romain Rolland'sClérambault(1920), about a grieving father's enraged protest against Frenchmilitarism;andJohn Dos Passos'sThree Soldiers(1921), one of a relatively small number ofAmerican novelsabout the First World War. Also in the post–World War I period, the subject of war is dealt with in an increasing number ofmodernistnovels, many of which were not "war novels" in the conventional sense, but which featured characters whosepsychological traumaandalienationfrom society stemmed directly from wartime experiences. One example of this type of novel isVirginia Woolf'sMrs. Dalloway(1925)', in which a keysubplotconcerns the tortuous descent of a young veteran, Septimus Warren Smith, toward insanity and suicide. In 1924,Laurence Stallingspublished his autobiographical war novel,Plumes.

The 1920s saw the so-called "war book boom," during which many men who had fought during the war were finally ready to write openly and critically about their war experiences. In 1929,Erich Maria Remarque'sIm Westen nichts Neues(All Quiet on the Western Front) was a massive, worldwidebestseller,not least for its brutally realistic account of the horrors oftrench warfarefrom the perspective of a Germaninfantryman.Less well known but equally shocking in its account of the horrors of trench warfare is the earlierStratis Myrivilis' Greek novelLife in the Tomb,which was first published in serialised form in the weekly newspaperKambana(April 1923 – January 1924), and then in revised and much expanded form in 1930. Also significant wereErnest Hemingway'sA Farewell to Arms(1929),Richard Aldington'sDeath of a Hero(1929),Arnold Zweig'sDer Streit um den Sergeanten Grischa(1927) (The Case of Sergeant Grischa),Charles Yale Harrison'sGenerals Die in Bed(1930). andWilliam March'sCompany K(1933).

Battle of Britain(1941),Paul Nash

Novels about World War I appeared less in the 1930s, though during this decade historical novels about earlier wars became popular.Margaret Mitchell'sGone with the Wind(1936), which recalls theAmerican Civil War,is an example of works of this trend.William Faulkner'sThe Unvanquished(1938) is his only novel that focuses on the Civil War years, but he deals with the subject of the long, aftermath of it in works likeThe Sound and the Fury(1929) andAbsalom, Absalom!(1936).

The 1990s and early 21st century saw another resurgence of novels about the First World War, withPat Barker'sRegeneration Trilogy:Regeneration(1991),The Eye in the Door(1993), andThe Ghost Road(1995), andBirdsong(1993) by English writerSebastian Faulks,and more recentlyThree to a Loaf(2008) by CanadianMichael Goodspeed.

World War II

World War II gave rise to a new boom in contemporary war novels. Unlike World War I novels, a European-dominated genre, World War II novels were produced in the greatest numbers by American writers, who made war in the air, on the sea, and in key theatres such as the Pacific Ocean and Asia integral to the war novel. Among the most successful American war novels wereHerman Wouk'sThe Caine Mutiny,James Jones'sFrom Here to Eternity,and Hemingway'sFor Whom the Bell Tolls,the latter a novel set in theSpanish Civil War.

Jean-Paul Sartre's novelTroubled Sleep(1949) (originally translated asIron in the Soul), the third part in the trilogyLes chemins de la liberté,The Roads to Freedom,"depicts the fall of France in 1940, and the anguished feelings of a group of Frenchmen whose pre-war apathy gives way to a consciousness of the dignity of individual resistance - to the German occupation and to fate in general - and solidarity with people similarly oppressed."^[2]The previous volumeLe sursis(1945,The Reprieve,explores the ramifications of the appeasement pact that Great Britain and France signed with Nazi Germany in 1938. Another significant French war novel wasPierre Boulle'sLe Pont de la rivière Kwaï(1952) (The Bridge over the River Kwai). He served as a secret agent under the name Peter John Rule and helped the resistance movement in China, Burma andFrench Indochina.War is a constant and central theme ofClaude Simon(1913 – 2005), the French novelist and the 1985Nobel Laureate in Literature:"It is present in one form or another in almost all of Simon's published works," Simon often contrasts various individuals' experiences of different historical conflicts in a single novel; World War I and the Second World War inL'Acacia(which also takes into account the impact of war on the widows of soldiers); theFrench Revolutionary Warsand the Second World War inLes Géorgiques."^[3]He served in the cavalry in 1940 and even took part in an attack on horseback against tanks.^[4]"The finest of all those novels is the one in which his own brief experience of warfare is used to tremendous effect:La Route Des Flandres(The Flanders Road,1960) [...] There, war becomes a metaphor all too suitable for the human condition in general, as the forms and protocols of the social order dissolve into murderous chaos.' "^[5]French philosopher and novelist,

Bomb damage in London, England during World War II

Thebombing of London in 1940-1is the subject of three British novels published in 1943;Graham Greene'sThe Ministry of Fear,James Hanley'sNo Direction,andHenry Green'sCaught.^[6]Greene's laterThe End of the Affair(1951) is set mainly during theflying bombraids on London of 1944.^[7]According to Bernard Bergonzi "[d]uring the war the preferred form of new fiction for new fiction writers [in Britain] was the short story".^[8]AlthoughJohn Cowper Powys's historical novelOwen Glendoweris set in the fifteenth century historical parallels exist between the beginning of the fifteenth century and the late 1930s and early 1940s: "A sense of contemporataneousness is ever present inOwen Glendower.We are in a world of change like our own ".^[9]The novel was conceived at a time when the "Spanish Civil War^{[note 1]}was a major topic of public debate "and completed on 24 December 1939, a few months afterWorld War IIhad begun.^[10]In the "Argument" that prefaced the (American) first edition of 1941, Powys comments "the beginning of the fifteenth century [...] saw the beginning of one of the most momentous and startling epochs oftransitionthat the world has known ".^[11]This was written in May 1940, and "[t]here can be no doubt" that readers of the novel would have "registered the connection between the actions of the book and the events of their own world".^[12]

Fair Stood the Wind for Franceis a 1944 novel byH. E. Bates,which is concerned with a pilot of aWellington bomber,who badly injures his arm when he brings his plane down in German-occupied Franceat the height of theSecond World War.Eventually he and his crew make the hazardous journey back to Britain by rowing boat, bicycle and train. Bates was commissioned into theRoyal Air Force(RAF) solely to write short stories, because theAir Ministryrealised that the populace was less concerned with facts and figures about the war, than it was with reading about those who were fighting it.

British novelistEvelyn Waugh'sPut Out More Flags(1942) is set during the "Phoney War",following the wartime activities of characters introduced in his earlier satirical novels, and Finnish novelistVäinö Linna'sThe Unknown Soldier(1954) set during theContinuation WarbetweenFinlandand theSoviet Uniontelling the viewpoint of ordinary Finnish soldiers. Waugh'sSword of Honourtrilogy,Men at Arms(1952),Officers and Gentlemen(1955) andUnconditional Surrender(1961) (published asThe End of the Battlein the US), loosely parallel Waugh's experiences in theSecond World War.Waugh received the 1952James Tait Black Memorial PrizeforMen at Arms.

Elizabeth Bowen'sThe Heat of the Day(1948) is another war novel. However, even though events occur mainly during World War II, the violence of war is usually absent from the narration: "two years after the Blitz, Londoners, no longer traumatised by nightly raids, were growing acclimatised to ruin."^[13]Rather than a period of material destruction, war functions instead as a circumstance that alters normality in people's lives. Stella confesses to Robert: "'weare friends of circumstance⎯war, this isolation, this atmosphere in which everything goes on and nothing's said. "^[14]There are, however, some isolated passages that deal with the bombings of London:^[15]

More experimental and unconventional American works in the post-war period includedJoseph Heller's satiricalCatch-22andThomas Pynchon'sGravity's Rainbow,an early example ofpostmodernism.Norman Mailer'sThe Naked and the Dead,Irwin Shaw'sThe Young Lions,and James Jones'The Thin Red Line,all explore the personal nature of war within the context of intense combat.

The English Patientis a1992 Booker Prize-winning novelby Canadian novelistMichael Ondaatje.The book follows four dissimilar people brought together at an Italian villa during theItalian CampaignofWorld War II.The four main characters are: an unrecognisably burned man—the titular patient, presumed to be English; hisCanadian Army nurse,aSikh British Army sapper,and aCanadian thief.The story occurs during theNorth African Campaignand is about the incremental revelations of the patient's actions prior to his injuries and the emotional effects of these revelations on the other characters.

The decades following World War II period also saw the rise of other types of war novel. One is theHolocaustnovel, of which CanadianA.M. Klein'sThe Second Scroll,ItalianPrimo Levi'sIf This Is a ManandIf Not Now, When?,and AmericanWilliam Styron'sSophie's Choiceare key examples. Another is the novel of internment or persecution (other than in the Holocaust), in which characters find themselves imprisoned or deprived of their civil rights as a direct result of war. An example isJoy Kogawa'sObasan,which is about Canada's deportation and internment of its citizens of Japanese descent during World War II. Similarly, the life story of a Ukrainian boy who is at first interned in a labour camp and then drafted to fight for Russia is depicted in UKRAINE - In the Time of War, by Sonia Campbell-Gillies.^[16] Black Rain(1965) byMasuji Ibuseis a novel based on the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.The Sea and Poison(1957) byShusaku Endois about Japanese medical experimentation on an American POW.

Korean war

South Korean refugees mid-1950

Almost immediately following World War II was theKorean War(1950–1953). The American novelist'sRichard Hooker'sMASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctorsis a black comedy set in Korea during the war; it was made into a movie and a successful television series. In his "A World Turned Colder:A Very Brief Assessment of Korean War Literature ", Pinaki Roy attempted in 2013 to provide a critical overview of the different publications, principally novels, published on the war.^[17]

Vietnam and later wars

After World War II, the war that has attracted the greatest number of novelists is theVietnam War.Graham Greene'sThe Quiet Americanwas the first novel to explore the origins of the Vietnam war in the French colonial atmosphere of the 1950s.Tim O'Brien'sThe Things They Carriedis a cycle of Vietnamvignettesthat reads like a novel.The Sorrow of WarbyBao Ninhis a poignant account of the war from the Vietnamese perspective.^{[note 2]} In the wake ofpostmodernismand the absence of wars equalling the magnitude of the two world wars, the majority of war novelists have concentrated on howmemoryand the ambiguities of time affect the meaning and experience of war. In herRegeneration Trilogy,British novelistPat Barkerreimagines World War I from a contemporary perspective.Ian McEwan's novelsBlack DogsandAtonementtake a similarly retrospective approach to World War II, including such events as the British retreat fromDunkirkin 1940 and theNaziinvasion of France. The work ofW. G. Sebald,most notablyAusterlitz,is a postmodern inquiry into Germany's struggle to come to terms with its troubled past.

Some contemporary novels emphasize action and intrigue above thematic depth.Tom Clancy'sThe Hunt for Red Octoberis a technically detailed account of submarine espionage during theCold War,and many ofJohn le Carré's spy novels are basically war novels for an age in which bureaucracy often replaces open combat. Another adaptation is the apocalyptic Christian novel, which focuses on the final showdown between universal forces of good and evil.Tim LaHayeis the author most readily associated with this genre. Manyfantasy novels,too, use the traditional war novel as a departure point for depictions of fictional wars in imaginary realms.

Iran–Iraq Warwas also an interesting case for novelists. Events and memoirs ofIran–Iraq Warhas led to unique war novels.Noureddin, Son of IranandOne Woman's War: Da (Mother)are among the many novels which reminds the horrible situation of war. Many of these novels are based on the interviews performed with participants and their memoirs.

The post9/11literary world has produced few war novels that address current events in theWar on Terrorism.One example isChris Cleave'sIncendiary(2005), which made headlines after its publication,^[18]for appearing to anticipate the7 July 2005 London bombings.

Notes

^On the April 26, 1937, two days after Powys began his novel, the Spanish town ofGuernica,was bombed by theNazi Germany'sLuftwaffe.It inspired the paintingGuernicabyPablo Picasso.
^For a critical overview of the different Vietnam War novels written or translated into English, see Pinaki Roy's "The Minds at War:Sensibilities in Select Vietnam War Novels ", published inThe Atlantic Literary Review Quarterly International(Vol. 9, No. 4, October–December 2008, pp. 121–37,ISBN 978-81-269-1091-5;ISSN 0972-3269).

References

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^Bergonzi, Bernard,War and Aftermath: English Literature and its Background 1939-60.Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993, p. 29.
^Bergonzi, Bernard,War and Aftermath,p. 89.
^Bergonzi, Bernard,War and Aftermath,p. 40.
^Herbert Williams,John Cowper Powys(Brigend: Seren, 1997), p.126.
^Charles Lock, "Owen Glendowerand the Dashing of Expectations ".The Powys Journal,vol. XV, 2005, p.71.
^p.x.
^W. J. Keith,Aspects of John Cowper Powys's 'Owen Glendower',p.69.
^Ellmann, 152.
^Heat of the Day,210
^Heat of the Day,98
^Campbell-Gillies, Ms Sonia (8 September 2016).UKRAINE - In the Time of War: UKRAINE - When will Peace reign?(1 ed.). CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.ISBN 9781537546179.
^The Atlantic Literary Review Quarterly14 (3), July–September 2013, pp. 39-53)
^Sansom, Ian (21 August 2005)."Dear Osama".The New York Times.New York, New York.Archivedfrom the original on 22 November 2011.Retrieved6 July2011.