Jack Breene
Fire and Forget: Short Stories from the Long War- Response
April 26, 2013
CW- Maffei
One of the
things I noticed about the three stories that were read was that there was not
a lot of action in any of them. I was surprised considering how war is the
epitome of action packed but the more I heard, the more I understood. In a war
like the two our country has been involved in for better part of a decade,
boredom is a prevalent experience amongst the soldiers.
The first
story featured a soldier in Hawaii on leave, about to go back. The second was
about the flight back to America after a tour in Iraq. And the third was about
two soldiers who were on guard duty in a very remote location. In all three,
there wasn’t much dialogue. The majority of the stories took place in the heads
of the narrators, which I thought was an appropriate way to portray the
mentality of a soldier in the 21st century.
One thing
that I didn’t like about the stories I heard, and many depictions of
contemporary soldiers, is the untapped looks at heroism. In the age of economic
imperialism, it seems like the glory of war has been completely stripped of its
soldiers. I think this loss is a bigger one than literature and movies give it
credit for considering how that used to be the largest compensation for risking
your life in battle. Now soldiers fight because it’s their job, not their role
in society.
After the
Q&A session following the reading, one of the authors commented on how
having a volunteer army drastically changes the conception of war but I didn’t
think any of the pieces I heard
reflected this change.
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