Abbott 1 Phil Klay’s Redeployment and War Rhetoric as Literature for Use by Kathryn Sullivan Abbott April 19, 2023 Abbott 2 Introduction That brain is thinking. Maybe it’s thinking about … a book that would make people kinder … –Dalton Trumbo, Johnny Got His Gun In 1950, just five years after the end of WWII, Kenneth Burke published A Rhetoric of Motives, in which he uses the rhetorical construction “literature for use.” He defines this term as literature with a definite audience and purpose. “Today,” he says in the book, “we would call it propaganda” (Burke 4). During WWII, the United States government put propaganda to work in the form of posters, films, and songs to rally support for Allied efforts overseas. Terms like “literature for use,” propaganda, and rhetoric may connote a need to approach content cautiously to avoid being manipulated. Burke wrote that “The reader of modern prose is ever on guard against ‘rhetoric,’ . . .” (qtd. in Hochmuth 133) and, when considering some of ancient philosophy’s discussion of its uses, perhaps these readers are justified. In Plato in Twelve Volumes, Gorgias speaks about the power of a skilled rhetorician: . . . If a rhetorician and a doctor were to enter any city you please, and there had to contend in speech before the Assembly or some other meeting as to which of the two should be appointed physician, you would find the physician was nowhere, while the master of speech would be appointed if he wished. And if he had to contend with a member of any other profession whatsoever, the rhetorician would persuade the meeting to appoint him before anyone else in the place: for there is no subject on which the rhetorician could not speak more persuasively than a member of any other profession whatsoever, before a multitude. So great, so strange, is the power of this art. (Plato) Abbott 3 This dialogue between Gorgias and Socrates demonstrates rhetoric’s power to persuade its consumers, which is its very purpose. Burke reminds his readers that “effective literature could be nothing else but rhetoric” (qtd. in Hochmuth 133). All literature, and all rhetoric, is political in that it comes about because of its creators’ desire to communicate some particular idea. If a piece of rhetoric persuades its audience in some way, that only means it has done the job it was created to do. WWII posters glorified patriotism and accentuated the evil of Nazi Germany as they urged United States residents to support the war effort at home. One poster, encouraging Americans to ration gasoline and “join a car-sharing club,” reads, “When you ride alone, you ride with Hitler!”. Posters and other forms of war rhetoric informed public opinion at the time and continue to inform the country’s national memory of WWII today. Kenneth Burke intended A Rhetoric of Motives to be the first of two volumes. The second volume, aptly entitled The War of Words, was not published until 2018. A larger project would allow for explication of Burke’s term, literature for use, and analysis of his recent, posthumous contribution to rhetorical theory. At this juncture it will have to suffice to say that I would like to adopt the term, literature for use, and broaden Burke’s definition by considering war rhetoric as literature for use and examining its role as a dynamic, enabling force acting upon public opinion. For my purposes here, I define war rhetoric as any news coverage, fictional and nonfiction literature, film, TV series, photograph, memorial, speech, etc. that either comes out of a war era or in some way depicts war. This essay focuses on Phil Klay’s collection of short stories about the Iraq War, Redeployment, as a piece of war rhetoric. I examine it as a proponent of serious engagement with war and explicate the text specifically as it discusses disconnect. I will discuss disconnect in greater detail shortly, but first, allow me to suggest that the consideration of war literature, like Abbott 4 Klay’s, as persuasive rhetoric is important because of the degree to which it informs civilians perceptions and opinions. The vast majority of U.S. residents have never been deployed as active duty military members. In fact, veterans make up only about seven percent of the country’s adult population (Schaeffer) and only one percent of U.S. adults are active duty servicemembers (Parker). To avoid confusion, moving forward, I use the word veteran to refer to people who have been deployed as active duty military members, whether or not they have retired from the Armed Forces. There may be a small percentage of U.S. residents with first-hand war experience, but the entire population should feel, even if only in a small way, the magnitude of its reality. As Klay, who is a Marine Corps veteran of the war in Iraq, argues, the United States involvement in global conflict “deserves to be thought about very seriously and very honestly, without resorting to the sort of comforting stories that allow us to tie a bow on the experience and move on” (NPR). Readers may associate these comforting stories with the so-called “good war,” otherwise known as WWII. In her book, Looking for the Good War, Elizabeth D. Samet, professor of English at West Point, focuses on the romanticized and damaging national memory of the WWII era. It has informed and influenced decisions to be involved in conflicts since WWII that have certainly not been victories, and yet the country’s popular war rhetoric continues to see the “greatest generation” through rose-colored lenses and apply these problematic beliefs to current foreign policy. War rhetoric, like that associated with WWII, often simplifies and romanticizes war, which is problematic because, to some level, it informs civilians’ understanding of it. Klay steers his readers away from that resort of somber and respectful, yet romanticized and simplified remembrance by telling irregular war stories that complicate the war narrative and, thereby, encourage serious engagement with the topic (NPR). Abbott 5 Redeployment as a Proponent of Serious Engagement with War In 2014, Klay published Redeployment, a collection of twelve haunting, heavy, important, and real – though fictional – short stories. To say the stories are grim would be an understatement. Klay gives his readers a glimpse into the lives of twelve different servicemen, telling stories about their experiences in Iraq, and more importantly, their experiences returning to the United States. For Klay, the title of the book, the word redeployment, does not mean a second or third deployment. It means returning home and figuring out how to live in the world again after experiencing trauma. It is about veterans making sense of their war experiences, reconciling with their often compartmentalized veteran and civilian identities, and coming to terms with emotional gaps between themselves and loved ones that had not existed prior to their deployments. Redeployment asks its readers to take into account aspects of the war narrative and veterans’ experiences that they may not have considered before. In other words, it puts its readers in conversation with veterans, whose stories, though fictional, encourage readers to see gaps or misconceptions in their own understandings. Klay sees discourse between veterans and civilians as a central part of serious engagement with war because, as he says, if veterans only talk to each other about wars, there will continue to be a problematic gap between their respective understandings. I will refer to this gap as disconnect, which is the word Klay used when describing his own homecoming. He says, “I'd seen people coming into the medical facility ... horribly injured. And then a few days later I'm walking down Madison Avenue in the summer and there's just zero sense that we're at war. It's very strange and difficult to deal with the disconnect.” Disconnect functions in various and imbricated ways throughout Redeployment. There is disconnect between veterans and civilians, disconnect between the warzone and the homefront, and disconnect between perceptions and Abbott 6 assumptions of war and the reality of that experience. Not only do the stories in Redeployment demonstrate disconnect thematically, the ontology of Redeployment makes it a proponent of serious engagement with war and, like all literature, a fundamental part of democratic discourse. Disconnect between Veterans and Civilians If you’re going to be understood, you have to keep talking. And that was the mission. Make her understand me. –Phil Klay, Redeployment The opening story in the collection,“Redeployment,” features a narrator, Sergeant Price, who struggles to interact with his wife upon returning home from Iraq. They reunite at a Marine Corps base camp where families of Marines have gathered to welcome their servicemembers home. Cheryl, Price’s wife, is there. He comments, “I moved in and kissed her. I figured that was what I was supposed to do. But it’d been too long and we were both too nervous and it felt like just lip on lip pushed together, I don't know” (8). It is understandable that a tired and hungover Marine, just returning from deployment, might not be in the mood for a homecoming celebration, but his stoicism and utter lack of enthusiasm about seeing his wife after seven months is shocking for readers who are accustomed to happy reunions in war rhetoric. There is an abundance of military homecoming videos on the news and uploaded to YouTube where family members and friends are surprised by their servicemember who has returned home. Cheryl, standing in what may more closely resemble fairgrounds than a military camp, presumably anticipates a joyous reunion with her husband, resembling those familiar pieces of Abbott 7 rhetoric that capture situations similar to her current one. His reaction to being home and to seeing her is probably disappointing to her and to Klay’s civilian readership. Klay chooses to open the collection this way, showing the awkward tension between a husband and wife, begging the reader to question what this veteran has been through to cause such a disconnect in his marriage and consider the very personal implications of a public issue. It is clear that Price feels he cannot or does not want to talk to his wife about what he has been through. She asks how he is, and his response is brief and inscrutable: “Good, I’m fine” (8). Perhaps in some upcoming moment the reader does not see, he confides in her, but at this point in the story, there is a big emotional and communicative gap between them. He has had experiences that she has not. Cheryl might feel that she is prepared to listen and asks very intentionally, “How are you?,” but Price clearly feels the disconnect between them and is frustrated by how he thinks she must perceive him. When she asks “How are you?,” he assumes she means, “How was it? Are you crazy now?” (8). Certainly Cheryl is aware of the trauma her husband must have experienced to some extent, and she tries to offer support, but as Klay goes on to suggest in other stories, no amount of explaining will result in her understanding because she was not there. Perhaps Price knows that and has decided not even to try to explain. Through these characters’ experience, Klay demonstrates one form of disconnect that is, perhaps, intensified by war rhetoric that has presumably shown them what to expect from a servicemember’s homecoming. Their reunion is utterly devoid of excitement, happy tears, long embraces, and other tropes common in homecoming rhetoric. Perhaps the lack of this shared experience and the disappointment Cheryl likely feels widens the emotional gap between them. Another of Klay’s characters feels disconnected from civilians after learning about the death of a fellow Marine. After returning home, he periodically searches the internet for news Abbott 8 about people he knows in Iraq. This is how he learns that one of them was killed sometime after he left. Naturally he feels upset and wants someone to talk to, but, as Klay makes a point of including, he does not want to talk to any civilians (258). He questions why he had to learn about the death of a friend online, and it occurs to him that no one from his unit told him the news because he is no longer one of them. Perhaps Klay suggests that a defining characteristic of a civilian is a lack of war experience and that even after retiring from the Armed Forces and returning to civilian life, a veteran cannot ever really be a civilian again. In “War Stories,” one of Redeployment’s twelve chapters, Klay depicts for his readers the ostensibly fruitless efforts by a veteran Marine, Jenks, to tell his story to a civilian, Sarah. Jenks has suffered unspeakable injury in an explosion during his deployment in Iraq. He is severely wounded and disfigured. In the story, the characters are in a bar and Sarah, an actress who is writing a play, interviews Jenks about what it is like to go to war. She tells him, “the point of the thing isn’t to be pro- or anti war, but to give people a better understanding of ‘what’s really going on’” (222). It quickly becomes clear that she is not interested in hearing Jenks’s opinion of what is going on for his take is hopeful and devoid of the indelicate details Sarah seems to fish for. He says, “Perhaps I’ve sacrificed more for my country than most, but I’ve sacrificed far, far less than some. I have good friends. I have all my limbs. I have my brain and my soul and hope for the future. What sort of fool would I have to be, to not accept these gifts with the joy they deserve?” (230). Without so much as a brief pause to validate Jenk’s comment about a very personal experience, she says “Okay, great,” and changes the subject. Readers might feel frustrated with Sarah because she so obviously misses the point of Jenks’s narrative. He, by his own account, does not suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and he has an inspiringly positive outlook on his situation, but Sarah does not seem to think the information Jenks gives her is what she Abbott 9 wants. She is writing a play, afterall, and presumably wants her efforts to be successful, which may mean telling fabricated war stories and marketing them as true stories. Based on her profession as an actress, Sarah could be accused of being in the business of falsifying accounts for entertainment’s sake. Despite the handicaps Jenks will deal with all his life, his outlook is very optimistic, and perhaps unexpected. Sarah is interested in hearing the narrative she expects to hear, the narrative she wants to hear or that she thinks audiences would respond well to. This particular, and fictional, example of veteran-civilian discourse depicts the two parties struggling to have even one productive conversation where both feel they have been heard. While Sarah may have felt that the interview was productive, certainly Jenks does not feel that his story has been documented well. Readers are not given any information about what Sarah’s notes include or what becomes of her play, but they do know that Jenks has written and revised his own story, which he carries with him, so they can assume the answers he gives Sarah are well thought out and very sincere. Despite this, Sarah is dissatisfied by them. Perhaps Klay is suggesting that civilians have preconceived notions of what war is like and assume that their conceptions must be realistic, or that one narrative must apply to all veterans. Perhaps he suggests that civilians are only interested in hearing dramatized, tragic narratives. Sarah has missed a great opportunity to document and present to her audiences a sincere war story. Tim O’Brien is a veteran of the war in Vietnam and the author of The Things They Carried, a fictional collection of short stories about that war. Since returning home, he has published several pieces of war rhetoric based on his experience in Vietnam. He says he did not decide to write about his war experience after returning home; rather, he felt a great obligation to write (Dialogue). Similarly, Sarah has an obligation to accurately portray Jenks’s experiences. Abbott 10 Here, Klay uses Sarah as an example of a creator of rhetoric, who, rather than ethically documenting what Jenks means to share with her and writing an atypical war story that sheds light on “what’s really going on,” conforms to a familiar model of war stories and fails to bring her audiences some truth. In this story, Klay gives an obvious bad example of veteran-civilian discourse to show his readers a tendency civilians may have to map their own assumptions onto veterans’ experiences. He also demonstrates more general disconnect between veterans and civilians throughout the story that comes because veterans have shared war experiences. There is an apparent disconnect between the three veterans at the table and Sarah. It shows in the unspoken understanding the veterans have of one another, in the humor and also reverence with which they respond to Jenks’s stories. It shows particularly well through Sarah’s oftentimes tactless responses to the same. Disconnect Between Warzone and Homefront We lived in a place that was totally different from anything … that audience could possibly understand. [They] think they’re so good ‘cause they’ve never had to go out on a street in Ramadi and weigh your life against the lives of the people in the building you’re taking fire from. You can’t describe it to someone who wasn’t there … –Phil Klay, Redeployment Part of the disconnect Klay sees is caused by the geographical distance from which civilians view war. Unlike the homefront during WWII, the efforts of U.S. troops abroad do not Abbott 11 significantly impact day-to-day life for civilians. Tim O’Brien speaks to this when he points out that civilians can potentially go an indeterminate amount of time never once considering violence and destruction happening thousands of miles away (Dialogue). Since civilians are not impelled to face the reality of war but do have and share opinions about it, Klay suggests again that discussion between veterans and civilians about war is paramount. There are a couple of ways this type of disconnect functions in Redeployment. First, Klay demonstrates how veterans may have difficulty transitioning between warzone and homefront because they are so different from one another. Secondly, by describing warzones as the settings for his characters’ memories, Klay complicates his readers’ perceptions and encourages them to question their assumptions. I first read Redeployment as a graduate student for a seminar on contemporary American literature. Some of my fellow students criticized Klay’s characters for using vulgar language, especially when talking about women. A question bubbled to the surface of the conversation multiple times within a few minutes: “Is it okay [that they use foul language]?” The fact that this question became the focus of discussion on a book about what it is like to be at war is, I believe, a testament to the immensity of the disconnect of which Klay speaks. Students in this college classroom were apparently so unaffected by war that some struggled even to understand the point Klay is trying to make. In some stories, Klay depicts going to war as if it is like going to another reality. It is so different from civilian life at home that it is hard for his characters and, presumably, veterans to live in both. One character in Klay’s story, “Bodies,” decides to join the Marines shortly after high school. His girlfriend, Rachel, who “was a pacifist in high school” calls off their relationship as a result of his decision (55). After his deployment, he visits Rachel and attempts to pick things up where they left off as if both of their lives had been paused during his Abbott 12 deployment. They struggle to make small talk, and it is clear she is not interested. There is disconnect between the narrator’s old life before his deployment and his current life. It is as if life went on without him while he was away on some other planet, the warzone. He continues to keep track of Rachel’s life: “She got married while I was on my third deployment. She had her first kid while I was on my fourth” (71). It is almost as if her reality is an alternate version of his because, as Klay suggests, to reconcile with the warzone and the homefront in the same reality is difficult. The chapter entitled “Psychological Operations,” features a narrator who has returned from Iraq with very complex and emotionally scarring memories that he struggles to process. He is attending college and befriends one of his classmates, Zara, who has strong opinions about social and political issues, including the war in Iraq. As the characters talk, it becomes clear to readers how much of a disconnect there is between their respective understandings of what it really means to be at war and what it means to be a soldier. The narrator comments on this: “[Zara] didn’t seem to realize how this conversation was different from class, where we bullshitted over political theory. This mattered. And every time she contradicted me with her smug little assumptions about who I was and why I did what I’d done, it grated” (Klay 197). Though Zara, presumably, is doing her best to understand and be an advocate for peace, her perspective is not informed by experience at war, which, Klay seems to suggest, might make it easy for her to have opinions that, to veterans, might not seem realistic, or, in other words, seem disconnected from the reality they have experienced. It is worth noting that the narrator is not without fault. He uses his Psy Ops expertise to his benefit. It is clear that he understands very well the stereotypical assumptions about veterans, and he uses this understanding repeatedly to manipulate Zara into feeling that she is somehow Abbott 13 antagonizing him. He tells her about his experience in Iraq, humiliating an enemy leader, making degrading comments to get him worked up and vulnerable. Zara disapproves, and when the narrator asks what she would have had him do, she responds “I’d rather you hadn’t done anything” (210), at which point she, arguably, precludes herself from taking part in serious engagement with war because her opinion toward it allows her to wash her hands of it, as it were. The combat strategy the narrator describes is obviously morally questionable and this is a complex scene, but let us consider that Klay, through Zara, is commenting on a tendency among civilians to disengage with war rhetoric. Readers of Redeployment and consumers of war rhetoric at large have the opportunity to help to bridge disconnect by consuming rhetoric. Consuming, however, is not enough to make the rhetoric useful. Consumers of war rhetoric must be willing to engage with the subject matter to a degree beyond saying they do not like it. They must allow it to be relevant to them and take responsibility for it. When Zara says she would rather those Marines “hadn’t done anything,” she condemns their decisions and the situation generally, absolving herself, in a sense, of any responsibility to propagate peace in a world where, unfortunately, war happens. To proclaim oneself a liberal pacifist, as some of my fellow seminar members did, when presented with an opportunity to engage with war rhetoric is not realistically useful since it is functionally the same as disengaging. Perhaps it is easy for Zara and civilians to cast judgment and propose idealistic solutions about what happens in warzones because they have never lived in one. However, it is important to consider another form of disconnect at play here—I would like to submit that Zara’s reaction is less about what actually happened in that warzone that day, and more about being opposed to war generally. If this is the case, she does not articulate herself well, which might be because she is not conscious of this disconnect between her opinion about war as a way to solve conflict and her opinion about subsequent specifics Abbott 14 about warfare. Assuming Zara has been misunderstood makes this an important distinction for Zara and the civilians she represents as well as the narrator and the veterans he represents to recognize and allow for. The comfortable distance from which U.S. civilians have been viewing war might encourage more reliance on simplified narratives documented in different forms of war rhetoric, like Klay’s. The war in Vietnam is famous partially for the media's role in bridging this distance, and even though since then, civilians have easy access to actual footage of war, Klay suggests that the most memorable and effective pieces of war rhetoric are sometimes fictional. It is possible that civilian audiences want stories that are intriguing, entertaining, and gritty. They have assumptions about what it must be like to go to war, what it does to people who do go, and they applaud rhetoric that affirms those beliefs. I would like to submit that most popular war rhetoric does just that. Disconnect between Perceptions and Reality “But war, unfortunately, is not like the movies” –Phil Klay, Redeployment One of Klay’s characters learns upon his arrival in Iraq that one of his Reconstruction Team members, Steve, may have relied too heavily on his perception of war based on war films: “When [Steve] flew in … he jumped out of the Black Hawk action-movie style, like he was gonna have to sprint through machine-gun fire to get to safety. Shattered his ankle with his very first step” (79). Readers can assume that Steve received military training before his deployment Abbott 15 and, therefore, his assumptions are not entirely based on fictional depictions of war in which characters frequently run through machine gun fire and die heroic deaths. Certainly Klay, in his attempt to maintain verisimilitude, knows that Steve underwent training. Nevertheless, he chooses to play an effective narrative trick: readers chuckle at Steve’s mishap before realizing they would likely make the same assumption—that a warzone is perilous and exciting. In this story, “Money as a Weapons System,” the narrator and his associates are never in combat, they do not fire weapons, and none of them are killed, which is uncommon for a fictional war story. Readers and audiences are interested in seeing the gory, gritty, heartbreaking side of war. That popular war films primarily depict the gory, gritty, and heartbreaking is evidence of this. Klay’s story about a soldier who fights the battle of bureaucracy and red tape shows his readers an aspect of the war narrative that most war rhetoric does not address. Serious engagement with war requires awareness of all its aspects, even those that may lack entertainment value. Klay suggests that some servicemembers may want the war experience, complete with excitement and gore—that is, until they have experienced it. It is not only civilians who have inaccurate perceptions of war. Servicemembers also make assumptions about war before they have been there. In the collection’s first story, the narrator comments, “Out of boot camp, Marines act like they’re gonna play Rambo … (3), suggesting that these Marines learn quickly that their reality is not like an action movie. Klay demonstrates the disconnect between a Marine’s assumptions about war and its reality in “Prayer in the Furnace.” The story is told from the perspective of a military chaplain. One Marine, Rodriguez, goes to speak with him multiple times. Through his brief conversations with the chaplain, the reader comes to understand that Rodriguez is very disturbed by his experiences, and upset by the unfeeling, “idiot[ic]” approaches his commanding officer takes to lead his unit. The Abbott 16 chaplain tells him, “This is a life you chose … What did you think you would find here?” (152). Rodriguez, presumably, did not know exactly what he was in for when he voluntarily joined the Marine infantry. Trauma like Rodriguez has experienced certainly cannot be anticipated, except in the abstract, by servicemembers before they have been in combat no matter how many times they may have descended into the heart of darkness with Marlon Brando as their tour guide. Klay posits that even servicemembers in warzones submit to stereotypical perceptions. In “Ten Kliks South,” an artillery unit shoots and destroys a smuggler’s checkpoint from ten kilometers away. Readers get the impression that the unit is relatively far removed from imminent danger and that firing a weapon capable of such extreme destruction is exciting for these Marines. One character tells another that he finally has something to tell his mom about. Another wonders what he can tell his wife. He says, “She thinks I’m a badass. She thinks I’m in danger,” to which his friend offers, “We get mortared from time to time.” (276). One can assume that this character’s wife would be glad to know that he is not in danger and that any mother would prefer that her child does not have any excitement to report from the war, but these characters seem to want to have stereotypical soldier experiences like those depicted in stereotypical war movies. As one of Klay’s characters puts it, “Nobody wants to do a year in Iraq and come back with nothing but stories about the soft-serve ice-cream machine at the embassy cafeteria” (94). Here Klay demonstrates disconnect in the form of cognitive dissonance exhibited by his characters who simultaneously want more action and, presumably, want to survive. Some characters who do not seem to have been deluded by popular culture’s portrayal of war submit to another stereotype: military members are hyper-masculine men. The reader need only look to WWII propaganda to learn that the stereotypical soldier is brave, strong, and Abbott 17 unfeeling. Klay demonstrates that this stereotype is problematic because, among other reasons, it might discourage servicemembers from seeking the psychological support they need. In “Prayer in the Furnace,” after the chaplain learns about the questionable leadership tactics of a unit’s commanding officer and the negative impact it has had on his soldiers, he goes to talk to Combat Stress. He reports, “ … they told me that if they sent home every Marine with [Combat and Operation Stress Reaction], there’d be nobody left to fight the war” (149). These specialists in Combat Stress are aware that military service is not good for mental health. The general public also seems to accept that this is true. U.S. president, Joe Biden, spoke briefly about the importance of mental and emotional support for U.S. veterans in his 2023 State of the Union address. Biden’s rhetoric, though, has not become useful rhetoric on this front because there is deep-seated disconnect that must first be addressed. This disconnect stems from a problematic conception of the hyper-masculine soldier, instilled by war rhetoric and perpetuated by memory creators. I borrow the term “memory creator” from Viet Thanh Nguyen, whose work on the memory of the war in Vietnam has heavily influenced my work on this project. Creators of war rhetoric shape public opinion of war and, subsequently, the national memory of it. Civilians’ and especially veterans’ perceptions that soldiers are nothing if not tougher than their circumstances is just one example of a problematic result of disconnect. Redeployment does not glorify war or the people who fight it, and it makes very clear to its reader, through “Prayer in the Furnace” and other stories, that to send home all veterans who struggle to cope with their circumstances, would be to send home all veterans. However, by reconciling with problematic instances in national memory to address and break down firmly established stereotypes and misconceptions, perhaps Biden’s rhetoric about support for veterans can become useful. Abbott 18 Klay provides his readers with multiple examples of Marines who are burdened by the masculine stereotype of servicemembers. They are embarrassed to admit that they are not okay because, in their minds, that means they are weak, that there is something wrong with them. In “Prayer in the Furnace.” The chaplain keeps snacks in his office because, he says, “...coming to get goodies is one inconspicuous way Marines can talk to the chaplain without announcing to their unit that they have an issue” (133). There is a stigma surrounding mental health issues, especially for veterans, and Klay shows that it is a big problem. His characters are broken, but because of the image of Marines that consumers of rhetoric are accustomed to, they are hesitant to admit they need to seek help. In “After Action Report,” a young Marine, Timhead, shoots and kills a man. The narrator, upon seeing this Marine’s distress, agrees to take responsibility for pulling the trigger. The narrator then begins to open up to his staff sergeant, taking comfort in the fact that it is not his own trauma he is upset by, but Timhead’s. In actuality, he is working through some of his own emotions but will not admit to himself that he is emotionally and psychologically affected by the trauma he has experienced. On the other hand, there is a stereotype that all veterans are traumatized or have PTSD, which is also incorrect. One of Klay’s characters is taken off guard when a fellow student approaches him and says, “I thought I could trust you … because, you know, you’ve got PTSD, too” (260). All this girl knows is that he is a veteran, and she assumes he has been through trauma much worse than her own. In actuality, he had a desk job in Iraq, and she was abused as a child. He does not admit to her that “... she’d been through infinitely worse” (261). Because he does not correct her, the reader can see that his decisions are dictated somewhat by this stereotype, and they can assume he has reinforced it not only in the mind of his fellow student Abbott 19 but his own as well—thereby preserving the disconnect between each of their perceptions of war and the reality of war. In depicting this interaction between his characters, Klay raises awareness for his readers of the assumptions they might make and the stereotypes to which they may subscribe where war is concerned. Another disconnect-breeding stereotype manifests itself as a common trope of war fiction: the inappropriately enthusiastic commanding officer. Most commonly a masculine man, this character seems to view soldiers as fodder. He congratulates and rewards his troops for successfully killing the enemy, which feels wrong to consumers who might subscribe to some sort of “war is bad. The least we can do is not enjoy it” ideology. This stereotype can propagate antiwar agendas, a noble cause to be sure, by making high ranking military officers out to be jingoistic buffoons. Frank Burns and others from the CBS comedy drama, M*A*S*H, come to mind. Klay wrote characters like this. One is especially memorable: a Captain Boden who, reportedly, congratulated every Marine on their first kill and told everyone that if a Marine got their first kill by stabbing someone to death, they’d get a ninety-six hour pass when they got back” (163). It is not hard for rhetoric to convince its consumers to dislike characters like these. M*A*S*H, which aired its first episodes in 1972, stars Alan Alda as Captain Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce. Audiences come to rely on his never-failing sarcasm and disrespect for Army regulations. Especially in the show’s later seasons, he is also the unfailing moral compass, at least as far as antiwar commentary goes. Hawkeye has multiple encounters with Gung Ho commanding officers throughout the series. The satire holds these straw men up to audience critique, and despite their being very exaggerated representations of a very simplified pro war opinion, audiences love to hate them and trust that by the end of the episode, Hawkeye will have put the bothersome crackpot in his place. It is important to note that even when Abbott 20 stereotypes like this one are used satirically, they can create problematic assumptions that contribute to disconnect. Klay writes in “Prayer in the Furnace” that this exaggerated model of commanding officer is not a very effective leader. He is, however, an effective wedge, helping to disconnect perceptions of war from its reality. War rhetoric that makes use of him does not give audiences the chance to wonder about his motives. What if, for example, these characters and the real-life officers who inspire them see that there is a job to do, that it is each of their responsibility to get it done, and choose to say, “Outstanding. You did your job. Exactly what you had to do” (34). What if this is their way of coping? What if it is superior to dwelling on the trauma? What if Boden tells his unit that anyone who stabs someone to death gets a ninety-six hour pass not as a reward, but because he knows they will need to take four mental health days after that experience? Here, I do not attempt to address whether any ends justify any means, only to propose, for the sake of my argument, that considering war to be a necessary evil may make Boden and Hawkeye’s various nemeses less so. Useful war rhetoric asks its consumers to recognize that the rhetoric they consume is political, meaning its creators attempt to tell certain kinds of narratives. It also encourages its consumers to allow their perceptions and opinions to be complicated. Tim O’Brien, who famously taught his readers “how to tell a true war story,” says that his goal as the author of war literature is to cause his readers to put themselves in his characters’ shoes and ask, what would I do in their situation? (Dialogue). If war rhetoric gets its consumers to ask themselves this question, it is helping to bridge disconnect because it draws civilians out of their unaffected homefront spheres and gets them to engage with war rhetoric in a useful way—in the sense that it demands self-conscious honesty and answerability from them. To internalize war rhetoric Abbott 21 disallows apathy. Like Klay’s character Sarah, consumers of war rhetoric have an obligation to take responsibility for having consumed it. Redeployment as a True War Story A true war story is never moral … If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. -Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried Tim O’Brien’s collection of short stories about the war in Vietnam, The Things They Carried, is “celebrated as one of the most important books about the experience of war” (NPR). The combination of its somber, sometimes eerie, always unromanticized stories and the forthrightness of its discussion of what makes a convincing war story has won it such acclaim. It grapples very consciously with storytelling in addition to war and blurs lines between fiction and reality. The characters tell each other stories and discuss how to do so well, O’Brien dedicates the book to his fictional characters, there is a character called Tim O’Brien, and one story is entitled “How to Tell a True War Story.” The Things They Carried and Redeployment are quite similar. In fact, according to the Chicago Tribune, “. . . [Klay] knows how to tell a true war story.” This is certainly a reference to O’Brien’s book. Redeployment is useful war rhetoric in the sense that it acquaints its readers with some version, incomplete though it certainly is, of what it is like to go to war. Beyond that, it challenges the stereotypical war story and encourages its readers to examine their own Abbott 22 perceptions, to see ways in which they perpetuate disconnect and fall victim to its far-reaching consequences. To legitimize Redeployment as useful rhetoric requires consumers to also acknowledge its shortcomings, the ways it may participate in skewed war rhetoric. There are several reasons Redeployment cannot represent the complete and “true” war experience: the stories are all written by one person—Klay, all twelve of Klay’s narrators are men, and most have been broken physically or mentally and emotionally by their deployments. Certainly it is missing narratives, but all any memory creator can hope to offer is some, not all, useful truth. It should not be considered “true” war rhetoric, but very useful, as far as readers are willing to engage with it earnestly. Earnest engagement need not be stifled by memory creators’ limited ability to supply their consumers with Truth. Memory creators, like Klay, whose war stories are atypical, in that they are not all gore and grit, do important work in the feedback loop that is the relationship between war rhetoric and public opinion. These stories are vital to the work of bridging disconnect because they broaden and challenge their consumers’ notions of what makes a war story. In response to the Chicago Tribune’s review, then, I would say Klay knows how to tell at least twelve unsettling, disturbing, and impactful war stories that, without doubt, inform his readers’ perception and opinions about war, but consumers must take responsibility for recognizing that they are being presented with rhetoric intended for a definite audience and purpose, as Burke notes. They must not mistake disturbing with True. There are many examples of books and films that are hailed as being some sort of “true” war story because they show audiences terrifying and upsetting realities, but civilian audiences will not acquire a complete or accurate understanding of the subject matter by consuming them. Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan is but one example. It seems to be real and gritty, so Abbott 23 consumers appreciate it. However, it is undeniably guilty of steering its audiences in simplified, patriotic directions, but it seems that audiences are willing to overlook that. Samet analyzes both Saving Private Ryan and Schindler’s List and the way they were received by audiences. She says that Schindler’s List was criticized for sentimentalizing the Holocaust by focusing on one man’s heroic efforts while Saving Private Ryan was only spared that same kind of criticism because of its portrayal of the D-day landing. In other words, Speilberg’s depiction of storming Omaha beach felt so realistic that audiences were and are willing to overlook the unrealistic aspects of the rest of the film. The civilian consumer of war rhetoric can easily sense she is being steered toward patriotism when she encounters WWII propaganda like Walt Disney’s 1943 cartoon, Der Fuehrer’s Face, in which Donald Duck, after a nightmare encounter with Nazi Germany, clad in star spangled pajamas, proudly proclaims, “Boy, am I glad to be a citizen of the United States of America!” However, the political purposes of other, more upsetting and gory, pieces of war rhetoric are more difficult to identify. Based on the success and acclaim received by rhetoric like Saving Private Ryan, civilians seem to equate gore and heroism with accuracy, which, of course, is evidence of disconnect. Useful war rhetoric also teaches consumers that war stories, like wars themselves, do not have clear beginnings or conclusive endings. Klay does not offer his readers satisfying beginnings or endings in Redeployment, making it difficult for readers to tie a bow on the difficult subject matter. This mirrors how war tends to be in reality—“a messy business, not easily or neatly contained by dates and borders” (Nguyen 8). In Nothing Ever Dies, Nguyen points out that, “all wars have murky beginnings and inconclusive endings, oftentimes continuing a preceding war and foreshadowing a later one” (5), but that is not what history Abbott 24 textbooks and memorial placards teach. In this way, history textbooks and similar war rhetoric contribute to disconnect by leading civilians to believe that there are distinct beginnings and endings to global conflict and, therefore, something understandable and satisfying about war even if that satisfaction comes only from being able to contain an aspect of war in a multiple choice quiz question. Useful war rhetoric is more complicated than that, and above all, it does not rectify or satisfy. One of Klay’s characters recalls her grandfather, a veteran of the Korean conflict, talking about the right way to tell a war story, and it is free from gore, heroism, and other stereotypical expectations. He tells her, the only right way to tell a true war story is not to do a film about the war. Instead, Do a film about a kid, growing up. About the girl he falls in love with and breaks his heart and how he joins the Army after World War Two. Then he starts a family and his first kid is born and it teaches him what it means to value life and to have something to live for and how to care for other people … And then… he’s sent over [to Korea] . . . and then in the last sixty seconds of the film … he’s shot in the water and drowns in three feet of surf and the movie doesn’t even give him a close-up, it just ends. That’d be a war film. (Klay 234) This model for how to tell a true war story shifts the focus for the characters and the audience away from the war and toward every other meaningful aspect of the characters’ lives. Nguyen reminds his readers that wars are “fought by sons, daughters, wives, and fathers” (18). Unlike soldiers in war movies, these sons’, daughters’, wives’, and fathers’ identities neither begin nor end with being a soldier. Like our hypothetical leading man, their lives must be filled with countless defining moments other than those that fit within the timeframe of their Abbott 25 deployments. The story is summarily concluded with the unceremonious description of the soldier’s death because his life was not made up or made meaningful by the Korean conflict. He dies in the last sixty seconds of the film because that is not the kind of ending that satisfies audiences. They want to see Private Ryan’s elderly self confirm for them what they hope is true: that the ultimate sacrifice of fallen soldiers is meaningful. Of course, it is up to the reader to decide if the ends justify the means, but war stories that satisfy audiences are unlikely to be true. Conclusions and the Limits of Representation Words, Words, Words—they do not reach me. -Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front Redeployment contains irregular narratives that break away from what readers might expect from a fictional book about war in hopes of encouraging serious engagement between veterans and civilians on the topic (NPR). Klay sees the disconnect between veterans and civilians and their respective understandings of what it means to go to war, and he seems to suggest this stems from veterans having much more complicated perceptions of war than civilians have. In his book, he complicates the war narrative and, subsequently, readers’ perceptions of war to promote moderation in public opinion about global conflict. Public opinion and war rhetoric are interdependent, both part of a cultural feedback loop; each one is continually shaping the other. War rhetoric must be honest with its consumers about the reality of that experience; otherwise, there will continue to be a problematic disconnect between veterans and civilians, warzone and homefront, perceptions and reality. Civilians consume war rhetoric at a Abbott 26 comfortable distance from the warzone, which might allow them to be apathetic, to make assertions about war and the ethical responsibilities of veterans, to criticize those involved at various levels of command, or some combination of these. Useful war rhetoric asks its consumers to take part in serious engagement by allowing their perceptions to be complicated. For consumers to involve themselves in this way requires verisimilitude in fictional work. Otherwise, civilians’ understanding is limited by unrealistic, possibly romanticized and incomplete portrayals. No one piece of war rhetoric can communicate the Truth to its consumers, so considering Redeployment, or any other piece of rhetoric, to be a true war story is potentially problematic and certainly raises questions about the limits of representation. Telling the truth about war is likely beyond Klay’s intended scope for Redeployment, and realistically, I am not sure that any piece of rhetoric can offer a completely truthful depiction, simply because a mediated representation cannot convey to its consumers the gravity of an experience so visceral. A larger project would allow me the time and space to further consider the limits of representation, specifically the ability/inability of language to fully articulate the Truth about war. It would also allow me to more thoroughly review American history, public opinion, and war rhetoric of the twentieth century, as well as discuss some of the major implications of attempts to repair disconnect for future national memory. Abbott 27 Works Cited Biden, Joe. “President Biden’s State of the Union Address.” YouTube, uploaded by The White House, 7 Feb. 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzcBTUvVp7M&ab_channel=TheWhiteHouse. Accessed 20 March 2023. Burke, Kenneth. A Rhetoric of Motives. University of California Press, 1969. Burke, Kenneth. The War of Words. Edited by Anthony Burke, Kyle Jensen, and Jack Selzer, University of California Press, 2018. Day, Jennifer. “Review: ‘Redeployment’ by Phil Klay.” Chicago Tribune, 7 March 2014, https://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/books/chi-redeployment-phil-klay-20140 307-story.html “Dialogue: Author Tim O’Brien.” YouTube, uploaded by Idaho Public Television, 13 Nov. 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKqY9Vp9u1U&ab_channel=IdahoPublicTelevision , Accessed 16 Feb. 2023. Disney, Walt. “Der Fuehrer’s Face.” Internet Archives, https://archive.org/details/DerFuehrersFace, Accessed 24 March 2023. Hochmuth, Marie. “Kenneth Burke and the “New Rhetoric.”” The Quarterly Journal of Speech, 1952, https://www.english.pitt.edu/sites/default/files/1930_nichols_article.pdf. Accessed 1 December 2022. Klay, Phil. “How War Literature Occupies the Realms of Both Fact and Fiction.” Literary Hub, https://lithub.com/how-war-literature-occupies-the-realms-of-both-fact-and-fiction/. Accessed 8 Feb. 2023. Abbott 28 Klay, Phil. Redeployment. Penguin, 2015. 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Schaeffer, Katherine. “The changing face of America’s veteran population.” Pew Research Center, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/04/05/the-changing-face-of-americas-vetera n-population/. Accessed 3 March 2023. Szalai, Jennifer. “‘Looking for the Good War’ Says Our Nostalgia for WWII Has Done Real Harm” The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/29/books/review-looking-for-good-war-elizabeth-sam et.html. Accessed 25 October 2022. The National WWII Museum. “World War II and Popular Culture.” https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/world-war-ii-and-popular-culture. Accessed 25 October 2022. Abbott 30 “Writer Phil Klay returns to war in ‘Redeployment.’” Youtube, uploaded by PBS Newshour, 24 November 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72Gfkd5KdQ8. Accessed 25 October 2022.