Imagining the Perpetrator in Iraq War Fiction

Ghent University Faculty of Arts and Philosophy

Imagining the Perpetrator in Iraq War Fiction:

Evan Wright’s Generation Kill and Kevin Powers’ The Yellow Birds

Supervisor: Paper submitted in partial Dr. Tobi Smethurst fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of “Master in de Taal- en Letterkunde: Engels – Nederlands” by Karen De Loof

May 2016

Acknowledgments

First of all, I would like to thank my supervisor Prof. Tobi Smethurst, for her help with providing great sources and for answering all my questions. Secondly, I would like to refer to two courses that inspired me to write a thesis on the subject of trauma theory, which are Dr.

Philippe Codde’s “Contemporary American Literature” and Dr. Stef Craps’ “Contemporary

English Literature”. The cross-cultural subjects handled in these two courses gave rise to my interest in how literature, 21th century conflicts and trauma theory are interwoven.

I would also especially like to thank my mother who took the time to proofread my whole thesis and bibliography and advised me to make spelling corrections where needed. Also a big thank you to all my family and friends for keeping me motivated by showing much interest in my dissertation.

Table of contents

1. Introduction ...... 1

2. Theoretical Framework ...... 3

2.1 Historical Framework ...... 3

2.2 Contemporary Trauma Studies ...... 9

2.3 Perpetrator Trauma ...... 18

2.3.1 Perpetrator Studies ...... 18

2.3.2 Combat ...... 20

3. Introduction to Primary Sources ...... 25

3.1 Iraq War ...... 25

3.2 Primary Sources ...... 30

4. Close Reading ...... 35

4.1 Gradual Disillusionment ...... 35

4.2 During Combat: Insidious Trauma ...... 40

4.3 Rationalization ...... 48

4.4 Coming Home ...... 53

5. Conclusion ...... 67

Works cited ...... 71

Word count: 22 797

1. Introduction

In my master dissertation I will explore the link between trauma studies and perpetrator fiction, more particularly with a focus on Iraq War fiction. The two novels I will discuss are

Evan Wright’s Generation Kill and Kevin Powers’ The Yellow Birds. In these two Iraq War novels both authors draw attention to the involvement in overwhelming warfare and define the mental state of the individual soldiers. However, the novels wield contrasting perspectives. While Evan Wright takes up the position of an outsider -he is an embedded reporter who finds himself witnessing severe combat without actually participating-, Kevin

Powers takes up the position of the veteran as he translates his own direct combat experiences and struggles. I particularly chose these two novels considering that the divergent view of a reporter and soldier on warfare offers an interesting starting point for my research.

By drawing on a close reading of Generation Kill and The Yellow Birds I discuss the way in which these novels offer a thorough representation of the position of the Iraq War soldiers within the realms of trauma studies. My aim is to purvey a comparative study that shows an analysis of the structure of my two novels linked with trauma theory. To achieve this research question I will firstly give an overview of the origins of trauma theory, referring to trauma pioneers and their theories. In addition, I will look at contemporary trauma studies and refer to the core concepts of trauma. Subsequently, I will focus on the particular perpetrator studies and discuss trauma features typically linked to combat trauma. After my theoretical framework I will introduce the specifics of the Iraq War in order to then situate my two primary sources within the correct historical framework. I will then analyze my two books via a close reading in which I focus on four main aspects: the gradual disillusionment among soldiers, the insidious trauma in combat situations, the justification of their perpetrated actions and the aftermath of trauma. By exploring these four elements I am able to compare the

1 structure of the two novels and show how they deal with moral questions and the aftermath related to combat. Finally, I aim to conclude with a coherent overview of my findings.

2. Theoretical Framework

In order to arrive at a coherent and correct understanding of the concept trauma, I will firstly investigate the origins of the term ‘trauma’. Therefore, I give a chronological overview of how the concept ‘trauma’ changed in meaning over the last decennia, and how it was used in different contexts.

2.1 Historical Framework

Nowadays trauma is commonly defined as a disorder of memory:

An overwhelming set of emotions of terror caused by certain events, cause the mind to

split or dissociate: it is unable to register the wound to the psyche because the ordinary

mechanisms of awareness and cognition are destroyed. As a result, the victim is

unable to recollect and integrate the hurtful experience in normal consciousness:

instead, she is haunted or possessed by intrusive traumatic memories. These memories

intrude the victim’s mind generally through symptoms such as flashbacks, nightmares,

numbing, guilt, violence… (Leys 2)

This definition stated by Ruth Leys in her book Trauma: A Genealogy is a contemporary interpretation of trauma. The term was reinterpreted multiple times throughout the years. For example, it changed from being interpreted as a physical notion to a mere wounding of the mind. To describe the chronological process I will firstly address the original understanding of the term, and will then focus on the three main elements that helped to define the contemporary term trauma: Freud’s interpretation of hysteria, the reinterpretation after World

War I and the meaning after the Vietnam war, which lead to the contemporary notion of Post

Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Furthermore, I will also focus on the stages of recovery; how a person diagnosed with traumatic symptoms was treated and how this notion evolved as well.

Ruth Leys mentions in her definition of trauma ‘to register the wound to the psyche’.

The use of the word ‘psyche’ already indicates a break with the original meaning and use of the concept trauma. The original use of the term trauma denoted a surgical wound, thus it was a physical term: a literal injury to the body (Leys 19). However, it was expanded with a psychological usage soon afterwards: the shock that causes the wound. The father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, adds to this interpretation the idea that an unexpected shock can also wound the mind. An event that takes place too soon, too suddenly, too unexpectedly to be fully grabbed by consciousness, is defined as a traumatic accident (Caruth, “Unclaimed”

101). The lack of preparedness of the mind for this sudden event causes a wound in the psyche. The event is not fully grasped at the moment of occurrence, therefore it is not processed and experienced as a normal incident. Consequently, the meaning of trauma was expanded; as it now marked a psychological interpretation as well. As claimed in Trauma: A

Genealogy, the mind cannot handle the increase of stimulus as this is too powerful to be worked off in the normal way (23). This does not exclude occasions where physical and psychological reactions to a devastating event can go hand in hand. William Sargant, a British psychiatrist, recounts a case where a man’s right hand was paralyzed. When the soldier was in the fields, he came across his own brother, who was severely wounded. His brother asked to shoot him in order to release him from his misery and pain. It was the hand that pulled the trigger that became paralyzed afterwards. After he confessed the incident and his feelings of guilt and grief, the hand started working again (Leys 192). Whilst narrating the past traumatic event, his paralyzed hand gradually began to heal. This anecdote illustrates the importance of confession; I will discuss this in my second chapter.

Trauma came into public attention when neurologist Sigmund Freud and psychologist

Pierre Janet were looking for an explanation for ‘female hysteria’. They both agreed that a psychological trauma could explain this hysterical behavior (Herman 12). Freud attached the term ‘double consciousness’ to this phenomenon, stressing that these women were acting hysterically unconsciously. After listening to numerous patients, Freud claimed that occurrences of sexual assault, abuse and incest in their childhood caused this behavior. A trigger in the present, such as a first sexual encounter in puberty, had caused the patients to relive these traumatic experiences. However, this explanation by Freud was not widely accepted. Hysteria was so common among women, that it would mean that an enormous amount of women would have been sexually abused in their childhood. Due to social pressure

Freud abandoned this theory (Herman 14). The neurologist afterwards stated that the hysteria among women could be explained with the idea of ‘the pleasure principle’: women were repressed in society, therefore they uttered their wishes through their dreams (Caruth,

“Unclaimed” 93). The dream is a conscious wish of what they would do if not restricted by society or religion.

This theory changed after World War I. Numerous soldiers came home after combat and suffered from symptoms that could be compared to those of female hysteria. Hence, this particular situation differs from Freud’s current theory on three main points; firstly it were men who suffered; secondly they were affected by external experiences and thirdly it was reflected in nightmares. First of all the concept of trauma now also reached adult men: the

First World War brought along the disillusion of manly honor and glory in battle. Many soldiers came home, suffering from nightmares, emotional outbursts, restlessness, acting numb… this all lead up to a mental breakdown of almost 40 percent of the British battle casualties (Herman 20). First, these men were pictured as moral invalids; they were accused of being morally weak and having lack of character. Later on authorities finally claimed that

“any man, of reasonably sound personality may break down if the strain is severe enough”

(Leys 191). Severe combat exposure can defeat any man, even the strongest soldier. These emotional breakdowns were designated as combat neurosis: the intensity and duration of the exposure to combat created a breakdown of the psyche (Leys 25). The emotional stress and responsibility cracks the soldier; the symptoms that strongly resembled hysteria were officially recognized and treated. The second element in contrast with the current notion of trauma is that these symptoms are the response to an external event: trench warfare. Unlike hysteria, it is not an internal conflict in the mind of the patient. Freud’s theory counters this idea by claiming that it does have an inner source, as he claims that it is a conflict in the man’s ego: the contrasting elements of mastery and failure lead to a collapse of the ego (Leys

24). Sargant moreover claims that it was the result of an interaction between the individual’s inborn constitution and external circumstances (Leys 190). A direct result of this failure of the ego is that these soldiers, who suffer from intrusive reactions of trauma, are often criticized. The soldiers are said to have betrayed their own morals because they themselves have assigned for combat: they should have anticipated that combat neurosis could be a possible result. Along with the aspect of outer judgment, the soldiers often suffer from what we could define as self-blame (Herman 67). Therefore, it is crucial that combat victims can heal in an understanding environment: one cannot judge them for being hypocrite or weak.

Thirdly, there is another last element that completely diverges from Freud’s initial perception on trauma. Freud’s pleasure principle offered an explanation to the irrational dreams of the hysteric women, as these were expressions of their secret wishes. Society restricted these women and therefore they translated their sexual fantasies through dreams. The World War I soldiers also suffered from irrational, incomprehensible, overwhelming dreams, yet these

‘dreams’ were intense nightmares in which the soldiers relived the traumatic experiences.

“Dreams occurring in traumatic neuroses have the characteristic of repeatedly bringing the

6 patient back into the situation of his accident, a situation from which he wakes up in another fright” (Caruth, “Unclaimed” 59). Because the soldier’s mind is unable to give the overwhelming event a meaning, he reenacts the moments of terror through dreams. By help of recreating the traumatic scene through his nightmares he tries to grasp the near-death experience. The nature of these dreams is thus in direct opposition with the previously stated pleasure principle, which is why Freud turned to the idea of the death drive, as stated in his essay ‘Beyond the Pleasure Principle’ (Leys 23). This death drive is the constant reliving of the traumatic event. I will focus more on this repetition compulsion in the second chapter of my paper.

Trauma regained attention after the Vietnam War, as many veterans suffered from the abovementioned traumatic symptoms. American psychiatrist Judith Herman mentions in her book Trauma and Recovery that it was only after the happenings of the Vietnam War that trauma became a relevant and influential theoretic research field (25). During the aftermaths of the Vietnam War the contemporary notion of the term PTSD was defined. This term is to this day the current notion of trauma. During the Vietnam War the awareness of possible traumatic side effects was already at stake: veterans organized ‘rap groups’ where people could recall their experiences. Later on the American Psychiatric Association included

“PTSD” as an official category of mental disorders (Herman 28).

Not only had the interpretation of the concept trauma changed throughout time, also the notion of recovery treatment evolved. It is now generally acknowledged that a trauma patient can only heal through ‘remembering how to forget’ (Leys 1). The patient is only capable of doing this when the trauma story is put into words and hence when a narrative language is developed. When he recollects and communicates the story, it is possible to give a meaning to the trauma (Leys 177). Cathy Caruth argues in Trauma: Explorations in Memory that “trauma requires integration, both for the sake of testimony and for the sake of cure”

(153). Trauma thus needs to be integrated in one’s own past: it needs to become a part of your history, not remain the center of your life nowadays. When trauma is transformed into a narrative memory, it allows the story to be communicated more easily; the story becomes more comprehensible when put in time and context. Trauma pioneers Sigmund Freud and

Pierre Janet already recognized this idea of restoring the patient’s mind through talking about the traumatic past. As a result of their research on finding an explanation for the hysteria among women, they both agreed that these women had to put their feelings into words in order to recover from this hysteric behavior (Herman 12). Afterwards, this theory became the basis of modern psychotherapy. A patient of psychologist Josef Breuer, a contemporary of

Freud and Janet, referred to this concept as the ‘talking cure’ (12). They thus discovered that reconstructing the patient’s past through narration helped to heal hysteria.

However, the talking cure was not the only possible cure that was recognized at that time: “Janet sometimes attempted in his work with hysterical patients to erase traumatic memories or even alter their content with the aid of hypnosis” (Leys 108). Freud and Janet commonly used hypnotism as a way of bringing the forgotten traumatic memories into conscious memory (Leys 4). Yet during World War I, American psychoanalyst Abram

Kardiner described hypnosis as a negative therapeutic tool, as he claimed that the patient needed to be ‘reeducated’ instead. His reeducation goal is what my thesis referred to as the

‘talking cure’, the patient gets reeducated as he or she consciously gets an insight into the traumatic event (Leys 194). During war it is nonetheless very common that soldiers, when suffering from acute traumatic symptoms, get a crisis intervention. They get a brief treatment and then have to return to combat as fast as possible: within 72 hours (Herman 165).

However, this method only helps the soldier to recover from acute trauma symptoms, not to fully readjust. These differences in therapeutic methods could be compared to the two contrasting concepts of the ‘participatory account’ and the ‘surgical account’ defined by Ruth

Leys. The latter, the surgical account, claims that the collaboration of the patient is irrelevant to the healing process. An example of this account is the use of hypnosis; the patient does not need to participate in his own healing process, he undergoes the practice of hypnosis. Still, this method was not widely accepted as being the best therapeutic practice. In the case of soldiers during combat it is very crucial that the soldiers regain their strong rational minds, and this is only possible when their self-discipline and autonomy is stressed (Leys 87).

Collaboration and by extension the ‘participatory account’ is still to this day seen as the most efficient account: through self-mastery and self-knowledge the patient is now able to master the intrusive traumatic symptoms independently, in other words the patient is now capable to regain his previous determination and courage (Leys 89).

2.2 Contemporary Trauma Studies

After providing a historical overview of trauma studies, my dissertation will now focus on contemporary trauma studies. To introduce what this chapter discusses I want to focus on

Cathy Caruth’s thorough definition of trauma in Unclaimed Experience:

In its general definition trauma is described as the response to an unexpected or

overwhelming violent event or events that are not fully grasped as they occur, but

return later in repeated flashbacks, nightmares, and other repetitive phenomena. (91)

Trauma theorist Cathy Caruth focuses on three main points in her interpretation of trauma; firstly it is the response to an overwhelming event that is not fully grasped; secondly Caruth stresses that it reoccurs after a period of time and thirdly it reoccurs through intrusive, repetitive phenomena. In this chapter I will thoroughly discuss these stages. Caruth also adds that traumatic experience suggests a paradox, as it is not fully experienced at the moment of occurrence, but is anyhow repeated numerously it its exact literal form. Another aspect is that

9 although marked by its immediacy, paradoxically it takes the form of a belatedness (91).

These main aspects and paradoxes form the basis of trauma studies, which is also the reason why trauma literature discusses these symptoms; as the act of reading trauma literature resembles the act of bearing witness to trauma (Whitehead 8). Likewise, the following chapter of my thesis will explore the link between trauma theory and trauma literature. After clarifying the fundamental components of Caruth’s trauma definition, I will also briefly discuss the process of recovery.

The first part of Caruth’s explanation stresses that “trauma is the response to an unexpected or overwhelming violent event or events that are not fully grasped as they occur”

(Caruth, “Trauma” 91). She explains that the person who faces these devastating events appears to be “seemingly unharmed” (7). It is as if the person does not experience the event at the moment of occurrence; referring back to Caruth’s definition the event is “not fully grasped”. You leave your own body, your notions of time and setting, and therefore you do not process the event directly. In order to explain her theory she uses Freud’s example of a train collision:

It may happen that someone gets away, apparently unharmed, from the spot where he

has suffered a shocking accident, for instance a train collision. In the course of the

following weeks, however, he develops a series of grave psychical and motor

symptoms. (7)

The person who experiences the train collision seems to be unable to witness the events fully at the moment of occurrence; for this reason there is a crisis in the registration of the event.

The overwhelming nature of the traumatic event causes the mind to split or dissociate. The intense emotions of stress, fear and surprise destroy the mechanisms of cognition and awareness (Leys 2). The trauma pioneers Breuer and Freud already recognized this idea of a

10 split in the person’s mind. They referred to the split in mind as an altered state of consciousness caused by unbearable emotions. Freud referred to this as a state of ‘double consciousness’ (Herman 12). Van der Kolk and Van der Hart’s essay in Trauma Explorations in Memory portrays a direct example of the double consciousness concept, as a survivor of

Auschwitz quotes: “I live in a double existence. The double of Auschwitz does not disturb or mingle with my life. As if it weren’t ‘me’ at all. Without this split, I wouldn’t have been able to come back to live” (178). This quote from a Holocaust survivor explains how the split in mind is a kind of defence mechanism: in order to survive he had to create a double ‘me’.

Caruth’s theory reflects on this automatic reaction of leaving the traumatic scene and creating a double. She states how, due to the lack of preparedness of the mind for this intense anxiety, the threat of danger is in fact recognized by the mind one moment too late. The shock and surprise is not experienced in time, and this causes the mind to split (Caruth, “Unclaimed”

62). In Trauma and Recovery American psychiatrist Judith Herman denotes dissociation as a process where the perceptions of the victim are numbed. She compares this alternation of consciousness to an animal being attacked, as both the animal and human ‘freeze’ when faced with dangers:

Perceptions may be numbed or distorted, with partial anaesthesia or the loss of

particular sensations. This combined with a feeling of indifference, emotional

detachment, and profound passivity in which the person relinquishes all initiative and

struggle. (43)

The victim freezes all emotions in order to protect himself against unbearable pain. Similar as

Caruth, Herman also stresses that the dissociated and numbed state of consciousness is a reaction to the helplessness and is consequently an attempt to protect oneself from the initial terror. Because of this dissociation the event has not been given a meaning yet, this will later

11 on show its effect through the intrusion of traumatic symptoms. The repressed scene is recalled numerously in order to try to give it a meaning (Leys 86).

This re-entry into the past experience usually takes place after a certain period of time.

As explained before, there is a paradox in as much that the immediacy of the traumatic event, may take a belated form (Caruth, “Trauma” 6). Caruth refers to this elapse between the accident’s first appearance and the reliving of this accident as “the incubation period” (7). The event is hence the start and infection of the trauma, but the symptoms are only visible after a certain amount of time. Caruth derived her theory from Freud’s initial concept of

“Nachträglichkeit” or “deferred action”, which states that the understanding of the traumatic event is often delayed. However, a crucial difference between the concepts incubation period and Nachträglichkeit is that Freud states that a trigger is needed in order to start this replay of events. Freud claims that a sexually abused person only starts to become aware of the traumatic nature of the past events when a new sexual memory triggers him or her (Leys 20).

Consequently, Freud’s theory stresses that the response to the overwhelming event is delayed.

One could state that this inherent latency is actually the delay in experience of the event itself, since the event is not fully processed at the moment of occurrence (Caruth, “Trauma” 8).

The third element of Caruth’s definition of trauma stresses that the traumatic experience is reproduced through intrusive phenomena. Leys denotes that bodily characteristics such as exhaustion, sleeplessness and repetitive nightmares reflect the repressed emotions (84). Freud’s theory refers to these trauma symptoms under the notion

“traumatic neurosis”. This term already indicates that the event seemingly possesses the person (Caruth, “Trauma” 4-5). Herman shows in her book Trauma and Recovery two stadia of the nature of this possession by an image or event; first, one encounters symptoms of hyperarousal, and later on the intrusive nature of these reproductions is stressed. Anxious and stressful behavior marks the first stage of trauma. Traumatized people are vulnerable to stress

12 and unexpected events, as they constantly fear a return of the previous terrifying events.

Considering the previous severe stress and intense stimuli of emotions during the traumatic event, the patient is constantly aware of everything around him or her (Caruth, “Trauma” 173-

4). Herman describes this state of hyper alertness as characterized by an irritated, aggressive behavior (36). Another aspect of this first stage of awareness is the sensitive response to sounds and images. Herman describes an experiment where Vietnam veterans were exposed to combat sounds, and as a response to these sounds the veterans got distressed (36). The sights, sounds and smells related to the earlier traumatic event cause the patients to relive this moment (Caruth, “Trauma” 174). Also in this first stadium of hyperarousal the patient will have poor sleeping habits; he will experience difficulty to fall asleep and will wake up at night as a result of interfering nightmares. Nightmares are central to the aftermath of a traumatic incident. Freud describes this phenomenon as follows: “Dreams occurring in traumatic neurosis have the characteristic of repeatedly bringing the patient back into the situation of his accident, a situation in which he wakes up in another fright” (Caruth, “Unclaimed” 59). As previously denoted, the nature of this returning traumatic dream is different from Freud’s previous studies on intrusive dreams. Painful experiences are repeated through dreams, therefore Freud later on acknowledged the concept of ‘death drive’. In these nightmares the victim returns to the traumatic scenes, and relives the near-death experience, or near-death emotions.

After this first state of alertness and awareness for possible terror, repetitive intrusion of traumatic memories marks the traumatized person’s life. However, this transition between these two stages cannot be indicated clearly, as there is no distinct border. These intrusive memories are different from ordinary ones, as they are memories that are not assimilated into the person’s life yet. More concretely they lack verbal narrative and context (Herman 38).

Pierre Janet contrasts the concept of the traumatic memory to a narrative memory. Narrative

13 memories are the common everyday memories, where one recalls a story at will. The traumatic memory on the other hand is an unconscious recalling of a memory.

Characteristically these memories are marked by the excessive presence of imagery and bodily sensations: there is no clear chronology or narrative, they almost become to resemble a memory of a child. Flashbacks and re-enactments of the trauma reflect the patient’s fixation to the trauma. Re-enactment occurs in a waking state, and is hence the repeated recreation of the traumatic event (Herman 39). As claimed before, the initial traumatic accident is not assimilated and not processed literally at the moment; however, paradoxically it returns in its literal form:

A range from amnesia for part, or all, of the traumatic events to frank dissociation, in

which large realms of experience or aspects of one’s identity are disowned. Such

failures of recall can paradoxically coexist with the opposite: intruding memories and

unbidden repetitive images of traumatic events. (Caruth, “Trauma” 152)

The reality of the event is recollected, there is an interaction between elision of memory and precision of recall as Caruth states (153). This return of the memory in its exact form can be a kind of alternative registration for what was not seen, not experienced at the moment itself.

Considering the actual event as incomprehensible, it is now relived in order to understand and master it (Herman 41). Another explanation for these traumatic memories is that by repeating the event, the victim tries to undo the memory (Herman 39). The memory is re-enacted in order to change the outcome of the terror as he attempts to undo the incident. Related to this repetition compulsion of the intrusive traumatic memory is Dominick LaCapra’s concept of acting-out (LaCapra 142). American trauma intellectual LaCapra stresses that before people can work through their trauma, they go through a process of “acting-out”. This is the active repeating of the trauma, which unconsciously possesses the life of the victim. He or she is unable to recognize the past event as history; therefore, it uncontrollably intrudes the present

(21). Hence, this means that the person is caught up in traumatic memories that invade his normal life. LaCapra refers to the concept of ‘melancholy’ and contrasts this with ‘mourning’.

Melancholy stresses the uncontrolled nature of the memory: “the traumatized self, locked in compulsive repetition, is possessed by the past, and remains narcissistically identified with the lost object” (66). He contrasts these concepts of acting-out and melancholy with their opposites: working-through and mourning. In a state of mourning, the victim is already capable of registering and controlling the trauma, therefore the memories will no longer haunt the patient. Yet, LaCapra stresses that the transition from acting-out to working-through is a natural process: the first is a condition to the second. They are related for the reason that working-through is the process of learning how to resist these intrusive symptoms. LaCapra states that working-through is a “countervailing force” to both dissociation and intrusion

(143).

This countervailing force is the phase where the patient learns to control the tendency to return to the trauma. He learns to distinguish the past event from the present; he takes a critical distance (LaCapra 143). The goal is to integrate the dissociated memory of the past into current meaning schemes (Caruth, “Trauma” 175). Herman stresses that assimilation and adaptation are two main concepts to rejuvenate: one has to adapt oneself to be able to control the traumatic symptoms, and has to be able to handle a confrontation with possible new danger. When the person learns to manage this, he will finally be able to assimilate fully the traumatic incident (41). This assimilation is directly linked with Herman’s concept of reconnection, which is the ultimate goal of the working-through process. The person needs to reconnect with both people and the general environment. When the past event no longer possesses you, it is important to try to reconcile with yourself (Herman 202). You have to engage in the future and investigate in relationships. Victims are often isolated from a normal functioning life for a long period and often they alienate themselves from all social

15 interactions, it is thus very crucial that they engage in life again. But this does not happen without any effort, a slow and gradual process is required in order to achieve this.

To be able to control the interfering flashbacks, nightmares and fear, one needs to transform the traumatic memory into a narrative memory. A narrative memory equals an ordinary one; it is the simple act of remembering an event and retelling it. This transformation is possible when the victim integrates the memory into the life story. This integration is achievable only when one “speaks of the unspeakable”, for the reason that the event can be given a meaning and place afterwards (Leys 109). Nevertheless, the traumatized person is not always right away equipped to talk about the past event, Herman states that it is necessary to first create a safe environment (155). Due to the paralyzing terror the victims often do not feel secure in their own body and home any more. Under these circumstances meditation and antidepressants can be a first approach to healing. Along with the physical restoration, the victim also needs to feel secure in his own direct environment. For this reason it is relevant that he or she is surrounded by family and friends. After this first crucial state of recovery one can start the process of working through trauma. The concept of ‘mourning’ characterizes this process. As LaCapra stressed, this is the re-engaging of the memory (66). The traumatized person needs to be confronted with the past accident. This asks a lot of courage from the patient, as this is coming face-to-face with the trauma (Herman 184). Oftentimes the patient links the re-telling of the story to a giving-up of an important reality (Caruth, “Trauma” vii).

The story would lose its literality and be reduced to a cliché. Another argument for not recounting the traumatic events is that the victims feel like they are betraying those who did not survive (LaCapra 22). They feel as if the relation with those who died will break.

However, the talking cure is necessary for the healing process. Both the facts and feelings concerning the incident need to be narrated and expressed. The patient not only has to tell what has happened, but also needs to relive the experience. Sound and smell provoke feelings

16 that one has not yet learned to control, therefore the therapist also needs to confront the patient with this. Sometimes a revisiting of the site of the incident, or looking at pictures of the concerned people can help to break the amnesia the patients often experience due to their fear of giving in to the trauma. Herman denotes that the therapist and the patient need to

“slowly reassemble an organized, detailed, verbal account, oriented in time and historical context” (177). As a result the patient can develop a full understanding of the event. To enhance this controlled reliving and retelling therapists often use the technique of making

“scripts” (182). In these scripts facts, emotions, context and meaning need to be written down.

The patient narrates these aspects while expressing his emotions and feelings as fully as possible. The story will gradually turn into a normal ordinary memory. The retelling of the story turns into the testimony of the witness. However, testifying is only effective when one can tell the story to someone else (Laub 70-71). The patient needs to be able to see that person as an ally (Herman 134). In Testimony Dori Laub refers to the therapist as someone who holds up or is a blank screen on which the patient inscribes the traumatic experiences for the first time (57). He can offer a framework to the uncontrolled reproduction of the accident (60). He guides the patient into telling the story and stimulates him to master the event. However, there are some risks involved when one is the listener that gently guides the traumatized patient:

LaCapra stresses that the therapist or family member listening to the traumatic experience of others can become unsettled (41). As the listener becomes a secondary witness to the traumatic event, as a result he or she experiences a sense of empathic unsettlement (71). These recounted dreadful memories can easily affect the listener because he empathizes with the patient’s past (Laub 129). This unsettlement might proceed to a completely vicarious experience of the trauma. This means that the listener will eventually identify with the patient and completely take on the trauma (Laub 132).

2.3 Perpetrator Trauma

2.3.1 Perpetrator Studies

So far, I gave an overview of the position of the victim and the general notion of trauma.

However, a large part of contemporary trauma studies is dedicated to the position of the perpetrator. As Saira Mohamed concludes in her article ‘Of Monsters and Men: Perpetrator

Trauma and Mass Atrocity’: “all victims suffer, but not all those who suffer are victims”

(1215). Not everyone seems to be so keen on acknowledging that perpetrators can also suffer from trauma symptoms; trauma seems to be a property of victimhood. Theorists often juxtapose the position of the victim and the perpetrator and resist acknowledging that perpetrator trauma exists as well (Mohamed 1189). The perpetrator who commits appalling crimes can, similar to the victim, also suffer from traumatic memories and grieve over strong feelings of guilt and shame. In this chapter of my thesis I will focus on the position of the perpetrator in trauma studies. Firstly, I will discuss how literature portrays perpetrators and why perpetrator studies are meaningful. Secondly, I will focus on the dubious position of war trauma in the theory of perpetrator trauma, considering that the position of the perpetrators often resembles Primo Levi’s concept of the ‘gray zone’. Finally, I will focus on the specific traumatic symptoms in relation to veterans.

Literature oftentimes portrays the perpetrator as a monstrous villain. Trauma theorist

Lyndsey Stonebridge argues that the perpetrators are “a primitive throwback, barbaric beasts whose actions were less a part of modern history than a vicious return to savage pre-history”

(98). The person embodies the image of a mindless creature. Likewise, Mohamed argues how the precise inhuman nature of the perpetrators is stressed (1209). By portraying the perpetrator as inhuman he or she is immediately assumed to be different from ordinary

18 people. This deviance is what creates the safe perception that ‘ordinary’ humans would never commit such crimes. Richard Crownshaw writes in his article ‘Perpetrator Fictions and

Transcultural Memory’ that “the scale of crime that makes it a fantasy of the impossible and which relieves us of ethical responsibility for considering the personal, quotidian, local and normative circumstances by which we might be implicated in perpetration” (78). Hence, he explains that by using the image of the perpetrator as a ‘monster’, we ‘average people’ confirm to ourselves that we therefore are incapable to commit these atrocities. German philosopher Hannah Arendt purveys a counterweight to this perception of the perpetrator. She advocates for a judgment that shows similarities between the perpetrator’s history and others, as this is how the reality of the committed crimes can be fully portrayed (Stonebridge 95). By acknowledging the perpetrator as a human being we can dismantle the circumstances in which this person became a mass murderer, a rapist… (Mohamed 1164-5). This way, it is possible to develop an insight into the person’s motives; for example, the reader can take a closer look into the choices the perpetrator made. Literature depicts both the victim and perpetrator as thinking human beings; however, this does not mean that the cruel past of the perpetrator is denied (Mohamed 1211-12). This does not result into a reading where the reader develops a certain empathy for the perpetrator; it is merely a plea for understanding the perpetrator’s perceptions and motives (Stonebridge 102).

LaCapra is one of the few early theorists who also focuses on the concept of perpetrator trauma. He stresses that literature, or culture in general, should not neglect this position ‘beyond good and evil’ and that we should seek to look beyond and state an “extra moral” category instead of showing only repulsion towards the perpetrator (133). Yet he is very cautious of this account; he stresses that there is the danger of identification or the creation of empathy towards the perpetrator. Crownshaw also focuses on this: he explains the juxtaposition between identifying with the perpetrator and on the other hand judging him or

19 her (77). Since representing the perpetrator brings along many complications, people oftentimes use a technique that British academic Eaglestone denotes as ‘swerving’. This technique helps to avoid a direct focus on the fundamental moral questions that are involved.

The approach focuses on the character of the perpetrator, but does not reveal his or her motives and certain influential circumstances (13). Using cliché language is the first type of swerving that Eaglestone denotes: by using stereotypical storylines or dialogues, the issue itself is not thoroughly discussed (18). Another type of swerving that avoids the perpetrating issue directly can be for example a suicide of the protagonist. The motives of the perpetrator can also be softened by stressing that the protagonist was abused or grew up in a miserable environment. These rhetorical devices all intend to avoid a reflection on the reasoning of perpetrators.

2.3.2 Combat

The distinction between victim and perpetrator is not always clear. Sometimes the so-called perpetrator can balance between the two concepts. This is what Primo Levi stresses in his concept of “the gray zone”, which is a metaphor for the morally ambiguous position of some perpetrators (42). The binary opposition in between victim/perpetrator is not always as black and white as usually portrayed. While Levi states his arguments by referring to the

Sonderkommando, I will argue that soldiers can be put in this ambiguous position as well.

First of all, the origin of the term PTSD has a contradictory meaning. The term PTSD was firstly denoted after numerous Vietnam veterans came home from war suffering from trauma.

Thus, the term in itself derived from a focus on perpetrator trauma (Gibbs 18). Veterans suffering from trauma are nowadays discussed in the realms of perpetrator trauma. However, the concepts ‘shell shock’ and ‘combat fatigue’, that are directly linked to combat, attributed

20 to develop the current concept of trauma. The focus was then put on the passive act of witnessing atrocities and the constant death fear, not on the active killing by soldiers

(Mohamed 1171). Not only the etymological and historical notions of trauma show the dubious account of war trauma, but also the way in which society portrays veterans. The

Hollywood Movie Industry produced numerous blockbusters that portray soldiers as real war heroes; there is no mention of the mass killing and perpetration. In Wright’s Generation Kill the soldiers themselves exclaim: “Do you realize the shit we’ve done here, the people we’ve killed? Back home in the civilian world, if we did this, we would go to prison” (Wright 352).

Turner gives an explanation for the question why soldiers are represented differently. He explains that this is because soldiers are the representation of the society that sent them into battle. They become “our boys” and they kill on the behalf of their society (Turner 11). The veterans are the most visible reminders of the war; if they would be portrayed as perpetrators the whole society would be seen as villainous. This is in clear link with the way in which perpetrators of war try to claim victimhood. By stressing that they are solely a part of a bigger system, pioneers of US foreign policy, they claim victimhood. They claim to have had little control in the act that gave rise to trauma, therefore they cannot be blamed (Mohamed 1175).

Hence, the portrayal of perpetrators is not always as black and white, and soldiers can be put in ‘the gray zone’.

The trauma symptoms of veterans reflect this ambiguous position: they reveal both specific victim and perpetrator trauma facets. If I refer back to Caruth’s trauma definition this indeed applies to soldiers as they also “respond to an unexpected or overwhelming violent event or set of events” (“Unclaimed” 91). Turner describes the situation of the average veteran after the Vietnam War as “a mentally ill veteran whose dominant symptom was an uncontrollable urge to return to Vietnam. The urge might manifest itself subtly, in little tics and twitches, or floridly, in full-blown repetitions of combat behavior that inevitably

21 entangled noncombatants” (53). Veterans suffer from the same symptoms and their nightmares and reenactments reflect similar unprocessed actions and events. The veteran

“seems to be a detached outside observer of his own thoughts, feelings and actions”

(Mohamed 1163). These haunting disturbances can be defined in the realms of victimhood, yet the following indications of trauma that my thesis will discuss are particularly linked to perpetrator trauma. A first point is that perpetrator trauma has a very insidious character. The chronic exposure to stress will cause the soldier to break down. It is not one single moment but rather the gradual set of events that causes this breakdown (Gibbs 168-9). This goes hand in hand with the gradual disillusionment about the cause of war. Soldiers forget the grounds on which their war is based; this can cause a critical attitude towards their own actions. In order to restore the initial motivation of the soldiers, the importance of masculinity is stressed.

By focusing on the manly ideals of being a warrior the sensible emotions are repressed: “[…] how the military manipulates particular forms of masculinity in order to produce aggression

[…] how military powers manipulate masculinity by portraying universal feelings of fear as somehow womanly, and therefore to be shunned” (Gibbs 185). There is no time for sadness, grief or rage, instead of endless mourning they have to go on (Turner 28).

Another emotion typical for perpetrator trauma is the intense feelings of guilt. This guilt is most commonly the result of either the killing of civilians or the death of a comrade

(Gibbs 170). After witnessing a numerous amount of women and children being shot or lying dead on the streets, soldiers experience both guilt and shame. A death of a comrade is for the soldier equal to a death of a family member:

Officers become symbolic fathers and their men, symbolic sons. As part of this

symbolic arrangement, soldiers come to assume that their leaders will treat them fairly,

honestly, and perhaps with affections, and that, in turn, they will offer loyal service

and perhaps even give up their lives on behalf of their comrades. (Turner 26)

Soldiers sacrifice themselves to save their buddies. Likewise, they feel a lot of guilt if they are unable to help their comrades. This can be compared to Primo Levi’s concept of “survivor’s guilt” (53). The soldier feels as if he does not deserve to have survived combat, because his buddy did not. The question of faith controls the veteran’s mind: “why him and not me?”

Therefore, it could be argued that the constant returning to the scene via flashbacks and reenactments is a conscious process. The soldier experiences so much shame for his failing.

Guilt and remorse go hand in hand: there is a conscious awareness of past actions and choices, therefore a conscious regret towards the past (Mohamed 1178). So the veteran forces himself to return to the event as he feels responsible for the high death toll, or the death of his friend.

Furthermore, the nature of the latency of the perpetrator’s trauma is different from regular trauma as well. Oftentimes veterans cannot really utter their trauma as there is a sort of moral resistance to listen to war trauma (Gibbs 171). Depending on the audience’s political views they are either welcomed as heroes or as villains when returning home (Turner 69). In both situations there is no acknowledgement of the trauma one might experience, this might lead to ignorance or moral resistance to listen to the suffering veteran. This can have an influence on the veteran’s self-esteem, manifesting itself by helplessness, thoughts of guilt and humiliation (Herman 56). The veteran is isolated “not only by the images of the horror that he has witnessed and perpetrated but also by his special status as an initiate in the cult of war” (Herman 66). In the next chapter, I will discuss how the American society alienated the

Iraq War veterans: the American public claimed this was a meaningless war. Oftentimes perpetrators try to justify their actions; by rationalizing their motives they try to explain the unbearable circumstances in which they committed these horrendous crimes (Mohamed

1185). One technique to do this is to change the position of perpetrator into one of a victim.

Lecturer in American Literature Alan Gibbs denotes that perpetrators regularly stress that war is defensive and inevitable, rather than chosen (177). By putting the stress on the invasive

23 forces, they try to overturn their own dubious position. An emphasis can be put on for example the cruelty of the opponents, the sometimes aggravating circumstances such as a dry desert, a lack of supplies… (Gibbs 178).

3. Introduction to Primary Sources

3.1 Iraq War

Bernie Sanders quotes in his campaign for the US 2016 elections: “Education is too expensive? The Iraq War was pretty damn expensive” (“Campaign rhetoric”). Still to this day the Iraq War is portrayed as one of the worst foreign policy blunders in US history. The Bush

Administration is blamed for its useless ‘war on terrorism’. This concept of ‘defeating terrorism’ was first denoted by George W. Bush after the 9/11 attacks. In Bush’s Address to the Congress and American Nation he focuses on terrorism as the enemy of the American people, stressing the word ‘terror’ 34 times in his speech (“State of the Union”). Bush states that “our war on terror begins with Al Qaeda” and stresses that this is only the beginning. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.

Bush gave rise to a period of war in the East from 2001 until 2009, costing over three billion dollar. By explaining the motives and failures of the Iraq War I am able to show how one has to contextualize the Iraq War veterans’ trauma within the realms and meaning of this counterproductive war.

Hence, the prelude to the Iraq War is directly linked to the incidents of 9/11. The aftermaths of the terrorist attacks on the United States brought about a sense of trauma that is portrayed as the trauma of a whole nation. By focusing on this collective trauma the US claims a position of victimhood. While the terrorists are portrayed as perpetrators, the

American nation on the other hand is the victim. By stressing this idea of victimhood and trauma, America hides away the fact that the attacks on the US landmarks actually denote that they are not as innocent. In Bush’s Address to the Nation after 9/11 he says that “America was targeted for attack because we’re the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world” (“9/11 Address”). This false claim of innocence is a well-thought-out strategy: the

25 politics that lead to this attack are decontextualized in that manner (Gibbs 121). Exactly like the media and politics do, post 9/11 culture and literature also take on this idea of victimhood.

Crownshaw writes that “most American fiction written about the 9/11 and its aftermath that deals with the concept of perpetration tends to configure the perpetrator in terms of the terrorist rather than the military or para-military perpetrator of the atrocities committed in

Afghanistan and Iraq following the events of 9/11, or in other theatres of American war” (80).

A few references in Evan Wright’s Generation Kill show that soldiers indeed were motivated by a sense of patriotism to defend the American nation, this endures a sense of a collective trauma of all citizens after 9/11. For example, a soldier claims to have “received after high school an appointment to go to the Naval Academy at Annapolis, but in the wake of 9/11 he decided to become a grunt Marine to do something for his country and to get in on the action”

(Wright 201-2). This denotes that the revenge atmosphere that characterized the Bush

Administration inspired many soldiers. The sense of constructing collective trauma was indeed crucial in garnering support for the Bush Administration’s forays into Afghanistan and

Iraq (Gibbs 121). Nevertheless, this sympathy evoked for the American nation cannot pass unchallenged (Gibbs 168).

Whereas the Bush Administration used this constructed victim position to gain support, the actual motives to invade Iraq were based on unyielding perpetration: firstly to fight Al Qaeda and anything linked to terrorism (war on terror) and secondly to find Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). The Bush Administration did everything to justify a war in Iraq, which included finding links with 9/11 and hence finding WMD, weapons Iraq was prohibited to own after the Persian Gulf War. Furthermore, America claimed that Saddam Hussein’s regime had links with terrorism, more particularly with the terroristic organization Al Qaeda.

These two reasons, solely based on presumptions, were convincing enough for Prime Minister

Blair and the British parliament to join Bush. However, there were many members of the US

26 parliament, many US citizens and a large part of the European continent that opposed these justifications to attack Iraq. The West disapproved of this war, as it was based on “spurious and ulterior motives” (Gibbs 171). Bernie Sanders, firmly opposing the prelude to a war in

Iraq, quotes in his 2002 speech against the Iraq War: “The question is whether he [Hussein] represents an imminent threat to the American people and whether a unilateral invasion of

Iraq will do more harm than good” (“Speech from 2002”). He also stresses an important question: “Will moderate governments in the region who have large Islamic fundamentalist populations be overthrown and replaced by extremists?” This was in 2002 a very on point observation from Sanders, as many historians now claim that there is a direct link between the

Iraq War, the massive destruction of Eastern land by Western policies, and the rise of extremist movements such as Islamic State. In addition, the former Illinois State Senator and contemporary President Barack Obama refused to accept Bush’s motives to fight Iraq: “That’s what I’m opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics” (“2002 Speech”). On February 15, 2003, an enormous protest against the Iraq War took place in over 600 cities. The anti-war rally in Rome is enlisted in

The Guinness Book of World Records as the largest anti-war protest ever: over three million people protested against the invasion of Iraq. This demonstrated that many opposed the insignificant reasoning of the Bush Administration. Generation Kill denotes this juxtaposition: “When I watched the broadcast of Colin Powell making the case for war to the

UN, I was abroad on a Navy ship in the Gulf with a group of American reporters who cheered whenever Powell enumerated another point building the case for the invasion. They booed when European diplomats presented their rebuttals. Being among reporters here sometimes felt like the buildup to a big game, Team USA versus The World” (Wright 30). The soldiers were initially all on the so-called ‘Team USA’, yet, their morals will slightly shift to a more critical attitude. In both Generation Kill and Yellow Birds it can be acknowledged that the

27 idea of fighting for a particular cause in this war will slightly change into a complete feeling of insecurity towards the morals of their war. A character in Kevin Powers’ novel reflects on the Iraq War as follows: “I thought of my grandfather’s war. How they had destinations and purpose […] we go back into a city that had fought this battle yearly” (91). The soldiers’ motivation is fading away and they recognize the unproductive nature of the war they are fighting:

“They see the invasion of Iraq as simply another campaign in a war without end,

which is pretty much what their commanders and their president have already told

them […] even though their Commander in Chief tells them they are fighting today in

Iraq to protect American freedom, few would be shaken to discover that they might

actually be leading a grab for oil. In a way, they almost expect to be lied to.” (Wright

19-20)

Even to this day the Iraq War is seen as a counterproductive war. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump declares that “the world would be better with Hussein in power”.

This provocative shout out of someone who supported the Iraq War in 2002, refers to the ineffectiveness of the Iraq War. The war proved ineffective, as the rate of terrorism is currently even higher in the Middle East (Diamond). Tony Blair himself recently admitted that there “had been mistakes in the planning of the operation” and “that the intelligence behind the decision to attack Iraq was wrong” (Osley).

This insight of the soldiers, the media and the West, in the ineffective nature of the war they fought is directly reflected in the trauma symptoms that the soldier faces when arriving home after combat. As previously stated, war veterans are usually welcomed as heroes. However, this is less true in the situation of the Iraq War veterans. Turner claims how the soldiers are the representations of their society and therefore seen as heroes (11). Yet the

US foreign policy is severely blamed for leading a thoughtless invasion in Iraq. The veterans of the Iraq War are therefore often avoided and not praised as much as other American veterans. They are the most visible reminders of the war, but now they come to stand for what the Americans were ashamed of (Turner 14). Whereas Turner’s book is referring to the

Vietnam War, it is the exact same situation for the Iraq War veterans. Both my novels do not directly focus on this particular sense of judgment that characterizes the Iraq War. However, they occasionally refer to occurrences where the soldiers reflect on their service. This self- judgment can be linked to Herman’s concept of disconnection. The soldiers are disconnected from themselves as well as from society: the soldier forgets his initial motives for the perpetrated crimes and his society confirms the purposelessness of his actions. When arriving home it is crucial that soldiers are welcomed in a safe environment. Yet the veterans are often alienated from their society. To reestablish autonomy and self-control the veteran needs support and understanding: “Beyond recognition, soldiers seek the meaning of their encounter with killing and death in the moral stance of civilian community. They need to know whether their actions were viewed as heroic or dishonorable, brave or cowardly, necessary and purposeful or meaningless” (Herman 70-71). The public and personal criticism, rejection and alienation cause the veteran to isolate from his environment.

Looking at the statistics of the amount of Iraq War veterans suffering from PTSD one can see that the numbers are distressing. The National Center for PTSD reports that 46 percent of the veterans came in for Veterans Affairs service, and 48 percent of those was diagnosed with PTSD or mental health problems (“Mental Health Effects”). The fact that the soldiers witnessed dead bodies, were shot at, were severely ambushed, received rocket or mortar fire or know somebody who was killed or seriously injured often triggers trauma. The number of veterans exposing PTSD symptoms is remarkably higher than in any other war. An explanation for this difference can be the longer deployment time, more severe combat

29 exposure and more severe physical injury. During the Iraq War the components were already aware that soldiers can develop severe trauma. Therefore, leaders of the platoon try to keep the moral high, or intervene where necessary. This alertness is present in the combat troops of Lieutenant Fick in Generation Kill: “Are your men having any combat-stress reactions we need to talk about?” (Wright 193). Due to this isolation particularly linked to combat trauma, veterans often wait several years before they finally ask for medical help. Doctors and front line clinicians are therefore asked to monitor the soldiers’ health in the most precise way that is possible. These despairing high rates of health care problems directly refer to the high amount of veterans who now strongly oppose the Iraq invasion. The War Veterans Against the War is an organization which exists of former military servants in the Iraq War. They utter what cruelties they have witnessed and speak out against the occupation of Iraq. They strive

“for a society that prioritized care for its warriors-- where all who serve receive adequate benefits and the highest standard of compassionate care regardless of discharge status” as well as “for a world free of unjust war” (Iraq Veterans Against the War).

3.2 Primary Sources

The Iraq War was a highly mediatized war: the mass media covered every decision, casualty or invasion. Yet this media coverage was marked by pro-war opinions and a high degree of censorship. By using this propaganda technique the US foreign policy tried to legitimize and justify its war. Sociologists Altheide and Grimes discuss in their article “War Programming:

The Propaganda Project and the Iraq War” how media manipulated the public opinion on the invasion in 2003. Previously my paper discussed that a common sense of fear and a shared victimhood colored the anticipation to invading Iraq. Yet, not only is the justification for invading Iraq a propaganda creation, in addition the overall coverage of the war is too. The

TV news, for example, did not show dead soldiers or Iraqis, but mainly tanks or other

30 equipment pictured on the Iraqi fields (Altheide and Grimes 15). By not showing contextual elements or real coverage of war incidents, the media influenced the public understanding of the war. Yet in a later stage of the invasion, journalists began to utter their anger to the war and to this propaganda. Along with this criticism reflected in journalism, fiction as well examines America’s role in ‘the bullshit war’ (Harris). The two books discussed in my dissertation both implement in the tradition of war literature and show features of this general sense of a war without clear motives.

The reporter Evan Wright wrote his novel Generation Kill after spending two months with the Marines of First Recon Battalion. The novel tackles the impressions of the embedded journalist’s encounter with these Marines and their missions. Evan Wright is a journalist of

American magazines such as TIME, Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone. For the latter Wright went to Iraq to witness and report on the 2003 Iraq invasion. He does not literally express pro or contra war sentiments in his book, he rather focuses on the particular individual faces of

America’s wars and their moral dilemmas. In the afterword of Generation Kill he writes that

“I am not always confident most Americans fully appreciate the caliber of the people fighting for them, the sacrifices they have made, and the sacrifices they continue to make. After the

Vietnam War ended, the onus of shame largely fell on the veterans. This time around, if shame is to be had when the Iraq conflicts end- and all indications are there will be plenty of it- the veterans are the last people in America to deserve it” (Wright 462). Rather than focusing on whether the Iraq War is fought for indisputable motives, Wright focuses on the

Marines and how they experience the war in the Iraqi landscapes.

The novel Generation Kill reflects on Wright’s own experiences within a military unit in Iraq. He finds himself most of the time in a Humvee with team leader Colbert and Marines

Reyes and Trombley. These are the Marines serving for their platoon commander Lieutenant

Fick. Often the sarcastic and humorous dialogues between the Marines serve as a

31 counterweight to the intensive descriptions of town destructions, home invasions or direct attacks. By quoting Hollywood movies or pop stars like “he bore an uncanny resemblance to

Matt Dillon’s roguishly charming cong-artist character in There’s something about Mary”

Wright portrays a generation of Marines characterized by pop culture and modern society

(Wright 97). Because Wright focuses on the individual Marines, the novel provides an interesting overview of how their opinion towards war evolved. The reader witnesses how the motivation for warfare and the Marines’ mental state gradually breaks down. In the prologue

Wright seems ‘to warn’ the reader or the soldiers themselves that “they will enter Baghdad as liberating heroes only to witness their astonishing victory crumble into chaos. They will face death every day. They will struggle with fear, confusion, questions over war crimes and leaders whose competence they do not trust. Above all, they will kill many people. A few of those deaths the men will no doubt think about and perhaps regret for the rest of their lives”

(Wright 22). As Wright shows an insight into the reality of fighting a war, he creates a likeable and human account of these Marines. Lieutenant Fick himself wrote a book called

One Bullet Away in which he portrays his experiences in war. Fick focuses on the tasks of a

Marine leader and especially on the importance of keeping your men physically and mentally strong. Evan Wright’s Generation Kill has been transferred into an HBO miniseries as well, to which Evan Wright contributed. The miniseries was very well received and nominated for 11

Primetime Emmy Awards.

The second novel I discuss in my dissertation is The Yellow Birds written by Kevin

Powers. The novel is a first-person narrative recounting the experiences of John Bartle. Kevin

Powers usually declares in interviews that he wrote his novel to serve as an answer to those who asked him the question “how was it like out there?” (Powers 238). The question seemed to him unanswerable as the happenings in Iraq were not even fully recorded in his own life

32 story. In the book the character Bartle uses the following words when his mom subjects him to the exact same question:

What happened? What fucking happened? That’s not even the question, I thought.

How is that the question? How do you answer the unanswerable? To say what

happened, the mere facts, the disposition of events in time, would come to seem like a

kind of treachery. The dominoes of moments, lined up symmetrically, then tumbling

backward against the hazy and unsure push of cause, showed only that a fall is every

object’s destiny. It is not enough to say what happened. Everything happened.

Everything fell. (Powers 148)

Haunted by his service in Iraq Kevin Powers writes this memorial, a novel narrated by the protagonist Bartle, reciting his emotional disintegration. The novel won the Guardian first book award, praising it as follows: “a must-read book, not only because it bears witness to this particular war, but also because it ekes out some scant but vital vision of humanity from its shame and incomprehensible violence” (Burnside).

The novel’s focalization is pictured through John Bartle’s eyes, written 9 years after his experiences in the Iraq War. The Yellow Birds recites several previous time slots in his life including moments before the war started, during combat and the aftermaths of war. By following Bartle’s life over such a long period, the reader witnesses how the Iraq War veteran slowly loses his faith in life. The novel describes how soldiers find themselves often times in a powerless position, because during combat everything depends on the circumstances or happenings and not on their own actions. While reciting the return to the US of these soldiers,

Powers gives a strong image of the consequences of warfare. Bartle experiences guilt and is often times haunted by his memories. The soldier slowly deteriorates: he stays inside, drinks a lot and fails to connect with his American life again. The story centralizes around a promise

Bartle made to the mom of his buddy in the army Daniel Murphy. He gave his word always to take care of her son and to bring him back home. He fails in doing so, as Murphy passes away, and he experiences intense grief and guilt towards Murphy’s family. He betrays himself and Murphy by breaking this promise and tries to undo this by looking back on everything and trying to put the blame on something else. Furthermore, Powers also shows in The Yellow

Birds how the American public and the soldiers overseas are highly separated. The American patriotism does not correlate with the sense of loss the veterans experience:

I feel like I’m being eaten from the inside out and I can’t tell anyone what’s going on

because everyone is so grateful to me all the time and I’ll feel like I’m ungrateful or

something. Or like I’ll give away that I don’t deserve anyone’s gratitude and really

they should all hate me for what I’ve done but everyone loves me for it and it’s driving

me crazy. (Powers 144)

Alienated and unable to control how he is portrayed or what he feels, Bartle represents the way in which the consequences of war can influence you for a lifetime. The title The Yellow

Birds is a reference to a marching song of the US military army: “A yellow bird/With a yellow bill/Was perched upon/my windowsill. /I lured him in/With a piece of bread/And then

I smashed/His fucking head…”

4. Close Reading

In my close reading of Generation Kill and Yellow Birds it is my aim to give an insight into techniques that these novels use to portray trauma. Both novels offer a different view of how a soldier develops and experiences trauma. To show these different rhetorical techniques I am firstly to discuss the soldiers’ gradual disillusionment with regard to their war motives, then I will focus on the insidious nature of trauma achieved during combat, subsequently my thesis explains the concept of rationalization in relation to warfare and finally I portray the aftermath of trauma.

4.1 Gradual Disillusionment

Generation Kill is written from the perspective of the embedded reporter Evan Wright, who reports on soldiers that face astounding warfare every day. Wright shows how the soldiers’ morale gradually fades into a state of indifference. At first the Marines are very excited to finally enter actual combat and to be faced with real life enemies and fire guns; however, subsequently the motivation slowly changes into a state of desperation. This initial thrill and excitement of combat is translated in the quote Get some!:

Get some! Is the unofficial Marine Corps cheer. […] It’s the cry of exhilaration after

firing a burst from a .50-caliber machine gun. Get some! expresses, in two simple

words, the excitement, the fear, the feelings of power and the erotic-tinged thrill that

come from confronting the extreme physical and emotional challenges posed by death,

which is, of course, what war is all about. [Emphasis in the original] (Wright 14)

The Marines are all eager to fight and be confronted with life threatening situations. The youngest member of the Marines is Lance Corporal Harold James Trombley. He is depicted as a youngster who is desensitized to killing as a result of modern military recruiting. Wright portrays Trombley as a young driftless and callous teenager who has no problem with any moral questions linked to combat. Every time he gets a possible kill he yells “I got one,

Sergeant!”, which expresses how proud he is and how he feels like the conqueror of the world

(Wright 17). Quotes such as “I felt like I was living it when I seen [sic] the flames coming out of windows, the blown-up car in the street, guys crawling around shooting at us. It was fucking cool” characterize Trombley’s cold-blooded attitude (Wright 18). This excitement of

Trombley is not unique, neither in the First Recon Battalion where Wright finds himself nor in Bartle’s platoon in Kevin Power’s novel. The chance to become a citizen who serves a meaningful position in society is the most common motivation for soldiers to participate in war. These soldiers often come from a poor family, have no chance to go to university, and want to represent and accomplish more than is now anticipated in their US lives. In The

Yellow Birds Kevin Powers expresses how “we’d had [sic] small lives, populated by a longing for something more substantial than dirt roads and small dreams. So we’d come here, where life needed no elaboration and others would tell us who to be” (Powers 37). Another attractive element of the army, aside from the offer of a heroic connotation, is the loyalty and friendship among the comrades. Turner also stresses this in his book Echoes of Combat: officers are the symbolic fathers and their men the symbolic sons. Therefore soldiers assume that their leaders will treat them fairly and with affection, in return they offer a loyal service (Turner 26). In

Generation Kill Wright denotes how:

I had almost looked down on the Marine’s shows of motto, the way they shouted Get

some! and acted so excited about being in a fight. But the fact is, there’s a definite

sense of exhilaration every time there’s an explosion and you’re still there afterwards.

There’s another kind of exhilaration, too. Everyone is side by side, facing the same big

fear: death […] Here, the Marines face death together, in their youth. If anyone dies,

he will do so surrounded by the very best friends he believes he will ever have.

(Wright 135)

The friendship among the comrades is so profound that anyone would be willing to sacrifice his life to save another buddy. This is also portrayed by Kevin Powers in The Yellow Birds where the protagonist John Bartle and his buddy Daniel Murphy are one unit. Taking care of his buddy is Bartle’s priority in Iraq, he promises to take him home alive and well. He tries to cheer him up when Murphy is losing his strong morale: “I spent a lot of time trying to identify the exact point at which I noticed a change in Murph, somehow thinking that if I could figure out where he had begun to slide down the curve of the bell that I could do something about it”

(Powers 154-5).

In this excerpt it is already discernible that Murphy’s morale is slowly breaking down.

The protagonist Bartle depicts how he could “see his blue eyes, the whites spiderwebbed with red. They had fallen farther into his sockets during the past months. There were times when I looked at him and could only see two small shadows, two empty holes” (Powers 7). The initial excitement of warfare is wearing off and the young Private Murphy is no longer motivated to continue. Halfway through Powers’ novel there is a conversation between

Murphy and Bartle where they both sit and watch a local nurse help victims. They love watching this scene as for them it is a sign of kindness and caring, feelings they have not seen or experienced for a long time: “he wanted to find a place where compassion still happened”

(Powers 165). In Generation Kill the same decrease in morale can be observed: “unlike after the ambush at Al Gharraf, when the team became giddy at the cessation of fire, everyone is now subdued” (Wright 312). A first indication of this decrease is the moment the Marines spend several hours with surrendered Iraqis. The Marines become upset that they are unable

37 to help these Iraqi civilians (Wright 96). Several other encounters with Iraqi civilians influence the morale of the soldiers. “Fuck it, dog. You think handing out some rice and candy bars is gonna [sic] change anything? It don’t change nothing [sic]”, is a desperate cry from soldier Espera who clearly recognizes the hopeless situation in which the Iraqis find themselves (Wright 300). Often the Marines feel more heroic when they are able to do something for the civilians than when they are in combat: “Despite bawling his eyes out,

Christopher tells me helping the refugees has afforded him his best moment in Iraq. ‘After driving here from Kuwait, shooting every house, person, dog in our path, we finally get to do something decent’”(Wright 149). Colbert also feels more responsible for civilians when faced with more tragedies: “Ever since the shepherd-shooting incident, Colbert’s demeanor has changed toward civilians, especially children. When he sees them now, he’s prone to uninhibited displays of sentimentality” (Wright 299). Correspondingly, even the young and ruthless Marine Trombley gets shaken when he accidently shoots an Iraqi child. The shot boy’s mother comes crying for help at their camp. When Trombley is faced with her pain he starts questioning if he is doing the right thing for the right people. More Marines start questioning this, for example Marine Espera even admits he regrets reenlisting: “Though

Espera takes pride in being a ‘violent warrior,’ the philosophical implications weigh on him”

(Wright 150). The human feelings are now more centered than the ideal of being a great warrior:

You join for the idealism, but eventually you see the flaws in it. You might fight for

this a while. Then you accept that one man isn’t going to change the Marine Corps. If

you love the Corps, you give up some for the ideals which motivated you to join in the

first place. (Wright 445)

Friendship and sovereignty gradually become more important values to the Marines than fighting. Instead of bragging about their committed violence, they feel shame and a sense of

38 uneasiness with the thought that they are committing huge crimes without even being sanctioned, on the contrary, they are being praised. Herman denotes this as a growing feeling of self-blame, as soldiers start to feel guilty towards all those who were killed by them, or by others. They criticize the system they are serving and feel responsible for every decision that has been made (Herman 68).

In order to prevent this gradual disillusionment the Marine lieutenants and officers handle soldiers in a precarious way. Soldiers are forced to disregard feelings like sadness, rage or grief, they need to keep focused on their duties (Turner 28). One element that is central in the techniques used to motivate the soldiers is to put the stress on the importance of masculinity. US military training concentrates on war as an opportunity to validate your masculinity (Gibbs 174). Any emotion is regarded as a sign of weakness that equals ‘feminine emotions’. In order to gain respect a soldier needs to show courage. This masculinity is linked with a keen interest in aggression, as Lieutenant Fick says in his motivational speech to his

Marines: “‘You’re being called on to kill, You’re going to be shot at. The Iraqis will try to fuck you up. Don’t be a trusting American. Leave that at the border. Think like a devious motherfucker. Be suspicious. Be aggressive’” (Wright 52). A little later during the war the other Lieutenant Ferrando lectures his Marines by saying “I’m starting to hear some of you questioning and bitching just like the troops. That is a fucking no-go. Attitude is contagious. It breeds like a fucking yeast infection” (Wright 247). However, the motivational speeches of

Lieutenant Nathaniel Fick of Colbert’s platoon seem to change. Wright observes that “while acting on these sentiments might make him a good person [Fick showed compassion and consideration to not participate in an unnecessary attack], they perhaps make him a less good officer” (Wright 304). Other tricks used to boost the morale of the soldiers are psychological techniques; these can sometimes be used to make soldiers eager for combat. In Generation

Kill for example Wright portrays how dramatic appearances of F-18 fighter-attack jets are

39 strategically ripping through the sky to trigger courageous and thrilling emotions (Wright

137). Likewise, one can read how sometimes the platoon was sent on purposeless missions, driving around for hours doing nothing, just to make them eager for real action: “Despite another night of sleeplessness, spirits are soaring. Most men are elated at the prospect of another mission. It’s like they’ve forgotten the horrors of Nasiriyah and Al Gharraf, twisted

Amtracs with dead Marines in them, mangled civilians on the highway” (Wright 251). Among the soldiers there is a sense of support for each other. Evan Wright writes about the incident when Trombley accidently shot a little boy. His platoon leader Colbert was very keen to confirm Trombley that he only did what he was meant to do; namely to protect the platoon.

By looking at the situation in a rational way Trombley can find comfort in his mistake, this because he got the support from his team leader (Wright 230). A last aspect is that the initial purpose of their mission is reiterated multiple times throughout the time they are in Iraq. This is shown in The Yellow Birds where the soldiers numerously hear Lieutenant Sterling stress that “We’re counting on you, boys. The people of the United States are counting on you. You may never do anything this important again in your entire lives” (Powers 89). Thus Sterling states that they are the American heroes that represent a fierce and proud character and lead a mission that is important on a worldwide scale.

4.2 During Combat: Insidious Trauma

Parallel to this disillusionment, the excessive impressions of astounding warfare also cause the soldiers to dissolve gradually. Caruth’s trauma definition states that generally “trauma is described as the response to an unexpected or overwhelming violent event or events that are not fully grasped as they occur, but return in repeated flashbacks, nightmares, and other repetitive phenomena” (Caruth, “Unclaimed” 91). In the following chapter I would like to

40 focus on the first part of this definition, trauma as “the response to an unexpected or overwhelming event that is not fully grasped”, as this is directly present in both novels discussed in my dissertation. In Generation Kill Wright refers to something Captain America, third Platoon commander, said to him:

“Some of us are not going to make it out of here. Each of us has to test the limits of

his will to survive in this reality.” He leans forward and speaks in grave tones. “Right

now, at any time, we could die. It almost makes you lose your sanity.” His pupils

quiver with increased intensity. “The fear of dying will make you lose your sanity. But

to remain calm and stay in a place where you think you will die, that is the definition

of insane, too. You must become insane to survive in combat.” (Wright 360)

The importance of remaining sane in combat is stressed numerous times. It is the lieutenant’s task to make sure his soldiers not only survive combat physically but also that they remain mentally strong. Both Evan Wright and Kevin Powers focus on the overwhelming nature of combat situations and the way in which these effect the soldiers. Oftentimes the moment of the attack is too intense to undergo it fully and the soldiers experience feelings such as indifference or numbness. Sometimes the acute stress and intense emotions are articulated in bodily symptoms. In Generation Kill Wright describes how “One EPW squirms ashamedly on the bench. A powerful odor comes from the truck. Apparently, he’s just had a classic combat- stress reaction and defecated in his pants” (Wright 273). The first reaction to this intense anxiety is to shit himself unconsciously. The same thing is happening in The Yellow Birds as a shot soldier also “shat his pants” (Powers 121). Soon afterwards, this soldier dies. While witnessing this scene Bartle “turned away, overwhelmed and dizzy, and vomited until nothing was left” (Powers 121). As Leys denotes, sometimes people are unable to discharge powerful emotions directly, through action or speech, and therefore they unconsciously convert them into physical or bodily symptoms (84). Yet what happens to most of the soldiers during

41 combat is that they experience a state of dissociation, they seemingly leave their own body in order to protect themselves. They do not experience the violent events in a direct way as they are protecting themselves from the intense stress and instant terror:

In combat, the change seems physical at first. Adrenaline begins to flood your system

the moment the first bullet is fired. But unlike adrenaline rushes in the civilian world-

a car accident or bungee jump, where the surge lasts only a few minutes- in combat,

the rush can go on for hours. In time, your body seems to burn out from it, or maybe

the adrenaline just runs out. Whatever the case, after a while you begin to almost lose

the physical capacity for fear. (Wright 380)

In Trauma and Recovery Judith Herman notes that the perceptions are frequently numbed or distorted, therefore the ones in battle experience a partial loss of particular sensations: “time sense may be altered, often with a sense of slow motion, and the experience may lose its quality of ordinary reality” (Herman 43). Particularly, Generation Kill describes this sense of feeling numb; the Marines regularly freeze all emotions during shooting:

The shooting continues on both sides. Less than half an hour before, Colbert had been

talking about stress reactions in combat. In addition to the embarrassing loss of bodily

control that 25 percent of all soldiers experience, other symptoms include time

dilation, a sense of time slowing down or speeding up; vividness, a starkly heightened

awareness of detail; random thoughts, the mind fixating on unimportant sequences,

memory loss, and, of course, your basic feelings of sheer terror. In my case, hearing

and sight become almost disconnected. I see more muzzle flashes next to the vehicle

but don’t hear them. In the seat beside me, Trombley fires 300 rounds from his

machine gun. Ordinarily, if someone were firing a machine gun that close to you, it

would be deafening. His gun seems to whisper. (Wright 182)

Evan Wright feels numb when he and the other Marines are ambushed. Instead of panicking about this situation where his life is in danger, he becomes paralyzed; he is no longer able to process what is going on. He feels deaf and blind to what is happening around him. This paralyzed state is comparable to the state of indifference that soldiers often experience.

Trombley explains that “When I shot those kids I felt the same way as when I shoot a deer. I felt lucky, like I got the Easter egg. I wanted to look at the kid I shoot. [sic] It felt weird”

(Wright 354). He seems to be indifferent towards his cruel and violent actions in Iraq. Even shooting kids does not seem to shake him, nor does it break his morale. The soldier feels emotionally detached, which is in fact a first instinct to protect himself against unbearable pain. It is easier to create a stronger and therefore indifferent version of yourself than to acknowledge that this violence is real (Herman 43). Wright also portrays this in an excerpt where the Marines are driving through Iraq and they see numerous of corpses on the road:

“Corpses of the Iraqi attackers who fell in the road have been run over repeatedly by tracked vehicles. They are flattened, with their entrails squished out. Marines in First Recon nickname one corpse Tomato Man, because from a distance he looks like a smashed crate of tomatoes in the road” (160). By referring to these corpses with nicknames such as ‘Tomato Man’ it is easier to take away any aspect of human suffering. They try to change these devastating sceneries by using elements of humor. Likewise, in The Yellow Birds Bartle and Murph invent a ‘game’ where they try to keep track of how many people around them die in combat:

“‘What’re we at? Nine sixty-eight? Nine seventy? We’ll have to check the paper when we get back.’ I was not surprised by the cruelty of my ambivalence then. Nothing seemed more natural than someone getting killed […] To continue I had to see the world with clear eyes, to focus on the essential. We only pay attention to rare things, and death was not rare” (Powers

11). This is a comparable situation, Bartle and Murph take away every emotional aspect linked to seeing dead corpses or fellow soldiers being killed. They are merely numbers added

43 up to a list of those who passed away. In Generation Kill the feeling of indifference is gracefully summarized in Espera’s letter to his wife:

I’ve learned there are two types of people in Iraq, those who are very good and those

who are dead. I’m very good. I’ve lost twenty pounds, shaved my head, started

smoking, my feet have half rotted off, and I move from filthy hole to filthy hole every

night. I see dead children and people everywhere and function in a void of

indifference. I keep you and our daughter locked away deep down inside, and I try not

to look there. (Wright 404)

The state of indifference serves as a protection from slipping away into emotions. Being numb and indifferent is used as a shield in order to maintain the soldier’s strong character. The

Marines of the First Recon Battalion often shut down all emotions; therefore they find themselves in a state where they do not think anymore: “He confesses to me that he had absolutely no feelings going through the city. He almost seems disturbed by this. ‘It was just like training,’ he says. ‘I just loaded and fired my weapon from muscle memory. I wasn’t even aware what my hands were doing.’” (Wright 189). The leader of Wright’s platoon

Corporal Colbert confessed this. Throughout the novel he proves to be the Marine with the strongest protection against emotions such as sorrow, guilt or doubt. However, Wright summarizes later on in Generation Kill: “It’s best to shut down, to block everything out. But to reach that state, you have to almost give up being yourself” (Wright 380). Even the strongest characters need to change this process of killing into a process of mere routine:

We pass dead bodies in the road again, men with RPG tubes by their sides, then more

than a dozen trucks and cars burned and smoking. You find most torched vehicles

have charred corpses nearby, occupants who crawled out and made it a few meters

before expiring, with their grasping hands still smoldering. We pass another car with a

small, mangled body outside it. It’s another child, face-down, and the clothes are too

ripped to determine the gender. Seeing this is almost no longer a big deal. Since the

shooting started in Nasiriyah forty-eight hours ago, firing weapons and seeing dead

people has become almost routine. (Wright 196)

Instead of feeling excited, guilty or even nauseous, the Marines do not feel anything at all.

The process of killing is simply turned into a routine: “Once the initial excitement wears off, invading a country becomes repetitive and stressful, like working on an old industrial assembly line: The task seldom varies, but if your attention wanders, you are liable to get injured or killed” (Wright 296). The embedded reporter Evan Wright describes this feeling as a sense of denial about what is happening around you. After experiencing first heavy gunfire he says that he “feels surprisingly calm”, and claims to be living in denial, “I simply refuse to believe anyone’s going to shoot me” (133). Feeling numb, indifferent, and shutting down every emotion or changing it into a routine will later on be reflected in haunting memories about combat. Because these soldiers shut down they do not process what is happening, therefore they will relive every moment in order to be able to give it a meaning. This is the process of belatedness; emotions are delayed and are only shown much later, usually when the soldiers arrive home. Caruth refers to this state as “seemingly unharmed” (“Trauma” 7).

However, both in Generation Kill and in The Yellow Birds some Marines are unable to block off these emotions of intense fear. Instead they react to these intense emotions immediately by becoming hysterical or by hallucinating. In The Yellow Birds the reader can witness how Bartle and Murph’s Lieutenant Sterling is slowly losing himself in combat. He starts spreading salt all over the ground claiming “It’s just a thing I do” (Powers 94). Later on he starts to spread salt all over the dead bodies in the fields and alleys, uttering some incomprehensible words. He begins to drag corpses into allies for no reason. When Bartle and

Murphy try to talk to him, and ask what he is doing, he stares at them as if he has no idea of

45 who they are. The same thing happens to Walt and Captain America in Generation Kill. After the gunfire one of the team leaders of Captain America claims that “something twisted in him the night we crossed into Iraq. He gets on the radio and starts shouting about how we’re going to take the Iraqi tanks. We didn’t see any tanks. It’s embarrassing for us” (Wright 97). Captain

America frequently starts shooting for no reason: “Wild dog! Shoot it!” (98). While communicating with him over the Humvee radios Captain America screams “We’re going to die if we don’t get out of here!!!”, Platoon leader Colbert is as rational enough to acknowledge that he is just nervous (372). Not only Captain America, but also Corporal Walt

Hasser suffers from the overwhelming combat sceneries. The first incident that marks this is when they are in the middle of a gunfire, Walt starts screaming useless things like “Shit! Shit!

Shit!”,“Raaaaaah!” or “This goddamn gun! It’s a piece of shit!”. In order to remain in control of the situation Colbert has to yell at him. He yells that losing control of your emotions does not help the other Marines and the general war spirit (Wright 280-1). The other incident that shows how Walt is not in control of his emotions is when the Marines are asked to block off a road and fire warning shots whenever someone tries to drive towards them. Instead of firing a warning shot first, Walt loses control and shoots the driver:

“That was a wounding shot, motherfucker!” Colbert yells, uncharacteristically pissed.

“What the fuck were you doing? I said, ‘Do not engage’!”

Hasser remains frozen on his SAW. Colbert walks around to him. He lowers his voice.

“Walt, you okay [sic]?” (Wright 332)

This last incident marks the whole platoon’s attitude towards Walt and Captain America’s irrational behavior. The others try to secure themselves from slipping away as well. For example, hallucinating is another direct reaction to extreme situations: “after three weeks out there, no sleep, living in those holes, I was fucking hallucinating” Espera claims, “we thought

46 those camels were fucking Hajjis coming over the wire. When we lit those motherfuckers up, it was fucking raining camel meat” (Wright 150). The Yellow Birds demonstrates that the extreme living conditions also have an influence on Private Murphy. He loses all motivation to fight and prefers to seclude himself from the others. Lieutenant Sterling explains to Bartle that he has seen this happen to many soldiers as they fade into being merely a “dead man”. He says that these soldiers focus too much on wanting to return home: “if you get back to the

States in your head before your ass is there too, then you are a fucking dead man” (Powers

156). He states that Murphy simply cannot handle all the stress and emotions and therefore will never become the old strong Murphy again. But as claimed previously most of these

Marines will only later on see the effects of these extremely overwhelming circumstances.

Platoon commander Colbert already knows this is what is going to happen to him and his fellow Marines as he notes:

“I’m going to have to bring this home with me and live with it,” he says. “A pilot

doesn’t go down and look at the civilians his bombs have hit. Artillerymen don’t see

the effects of what they do. But guys on the ground do. This is killing me inside.”

(Wright 228)

My thesis will discuss the specific aftermath of combat translated into traumatic memories in the fourth chapter of my close reading. The trauma linked to heavy combat circumstances is not a sudden fact, but a slow and gradual process. The chronic exposure to stress causes the soldier to break down slowly.

4.3 Rationalization

I now will focus on the particular way soldiers try to contextualize these intense emotions of fear. In the first chapter of my master dissertation I gave an overview of the general characteristics of perpetrator fiction. One crucial point is the way in which perpetrators often try to undo this perpetrator position by creating a victim position. They try to justify their actions by showing the particular circumstances they were in at the time they committed these crimes. By clarifying these unbearable circumstances and putting the focus on the invasive forces, one shows another perspective on the past actions. The focus is often on the empathy for the civilians or for the opponents, which creates a more human image of those seen as perpetrators. In Generation Kill the reader can acknowledge all these facets clearly, as well as in The Yellow Birds where Kevin Powers sometimes uses these rhetorical devices.

The first element that my thesis will discuss is how unbearable circumstances contribute to creating a victim position. The Yellow Birds opens with the endearing phrase

“The war tried to kill us in the spring” (Powers 3). This turns around the victim/perpetrator position as the soldiers are now said to be threatened by war. Likewise the narrator claims

“While we slept, the war rubbed its thousand ribs against the ground in prayer” (3). The focus is on the soldiers’ living conditions. Generation Kill also shows this, as Evan Wright describes:

Shamal winds gust at up to fifty miles an hour, sometimes blowing over twenty-meter-

long platoon tents Marines sleep in, shredding apart the canvas and burying them in

several feet of sand […] The Marines who’ve been here for weeks have runny noses

and inflamed eyes from the constant dust. A lot of them walk around with rags

wrapped around their faces to keep the dust out, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Several develop walking pneumonia even before the invasion begins. (Wright 32)

Alan Gibbs, author of Contemporary American Trauma Narratives refers to the invasive force of the desert and sand as “the sand metaphor”, which serves as an opponent to the soldiers

(179). Another element is the soldiers’ inefficient equipment that often counteracts a fluid work method. Evan Wright describes the MOPPS costumes, Mission Oriented Protective

Posture, which serve as a protection against chemicals: “on the inside they are lined with a plastic mesh that feels like the surface of a scouring sponge and is embedded with carbon power, a barrier to most chemical agents. They are hot, stiff and scratchy, and have the bulk of wearing a ski suit after you have fallen into a lake” (Wright 55-6). Also the shoes they are given cause tension: “many Marines who have taken their boots off for the first time in a week discover how the skin on their feet is rotting off in pale white strips like tapeworms, as a result of fungal infections” (238). Not only these clothes are the source of many complains, in addition the unvaried meals and small amount of food create a lot of protest: “everyone will be reduced to about one and a half meals per day until we reach Baghdad” (216). The exhaustion caused by these circumstances is additionally used as a way to portray the soldiers as victims. Platoon leader Colbert claims how “It’s a rare admission of helplessness, a function of fatigue setting in after ninety-six hours of little or no sleep” (Wright 216). The bad equipment, food and lack of sleep cause the soldiers to lapse into a victim position, as they therefore no longer have full control over their bodies. This sense of not being in control over your body and actions is furthermore portrayed by Kevin Powers as both Bartle and Murphy feel as if they are solely a part of a bigger system where they can no longer make decisions for themselves. Bartle explains that when he came home the first night, he debated about whether or not to have sex with a prostitute, he just wanted “to have control over something, even if it was just for two minutes” (Powers 70).

Another element used by Evan Wright to portray a more human picture of the platoon he joined, is to focus on their empathy towards civilians. The novel Generation Kill

49 repeatedly alludes to situations in which the Marines help civilians. Consequently, the Iraqis start to see the Marines as liberators, not as perpetrators. The reader witnesses how the

Marines hand out water in certain Iraqi cities, how they provide medical help and listen to some traumatic experiences of these civilians. By contrasting the excessive gunfire to this sympathetic assistance, Wright paints a diverse image of the Marines. He also depicts scenes in which the American soldiers are seen as the ultimate liberators of the Iraqis oppressed under Saddam’s regime. A corporal describes how “The people of this country live like rats.

Hopefully, these people will lead a better life because of what we’re doing” (138). Scenes in which Iraqis welcome the Americans also serve in enhancing this positive image: “They greet the Marines like visiting celebrities. ‘Hello, my friend!’ some of them shout. ‘I love you!’ It doesn’t seem to matter that these young men have just witnessed portions of their city being destroyed” (Wright 295). However, this quote clearly proves that Evan Wright takes on an ambiguous position as he recounts the surrealistic nature of this scenery. He leaves this duality between the position of the soldiers as destroyers or liberators open for interpretation.

By quoting a civilian who says “‘We are already living in hell. If you let us pray and don’t interfere with our women, we accept you’” Wright stresses the idea of ‘being accepted’ rather than ‘being praised’ by the civilians (264). His account of portraying the American Marines as liberators is thus ambiguous. He also includes a speech from Enico Man in which Enico expresses his views on this war:

“There is not a good thing that comes out of war,” he tells me later on. “I’m not going

to pretend I’m this great American savior in Iraq. We didn’t come here to liberate. We

came to look out for our interests. That we are here is good. But if to liberate them

means putting a Starbucks and a MacDonald’s on every street corner, is that

liberation? But I have to justify this to myself. It’s Saddam’s fault.” Still, he says, “the

protestors have a lot of valid points. War sucks.” (Wright 128)

Enico hence stresses the need to justify his actions; however, not with the aim to convince the

American public, but rather to persuade himself. He uses the dictatorial regime of Saddam to do this, claiming that neither the Saddam regime nor the American invasion is satisfying. By showing these different views of this dilemma Wright gives a neutral view of whether the soldiers can justify their actions.

A third element that shows an attempt to rationalize the Marines’ actions in

Generation Kill is the focus on the ROE. The Rules Of Engagement serve as a guidance to the

Marines concerning who can be shot at in which circumstances. The Marines often use these rules as a way of justifying their deeds: “The ROE lay out all the conditions regarding when a

Marine may or may not fire on Iraqis. The problem is, some Iraqi soldiers will presumably change out their uniforms and fight in civilian clothes. Others will remain in uniform but surrender. There might be someone in uniform surrendering and others in uniforms fighting”

(52). By sticking to these Rules Of Engagement the Marines can thus justify having killed a civilian who was wearing a uniform. The ROE are changed multiple times throughout their battle yet continue to serve as an illusion of moral rectitude. However, many Americans themselves acknowledge this illusion. For instance, Sergeant Gunny Wynn, who serves under

Lieutenant Fick, claims:

“I’ve spent five months in Somalia, and we got a lot of good kills out there. But we let

a lot more bad guys get away than we killed, and that’s okay. Don’t fucking waste a

mother or some kid. Don’t fire into a crowd. Those people north of here have been

oppressed for years. They’re just like us. Don’t hurt them, even if you can justify it

later under our ROE.” (Wright 54)

The sergeant here recognizes that the ROE can easily serve as an excuse to justify irrational killing. But Gunny Wynn also explains that soldiers often act without first debating whether

51 something is morally right or wrong: “However admirable the military’s attempts are to create

ROE, they basically create an illusion of moral order where there is none. The Marines operate in chaos. It doesn’t matter if a Marine is following orders and ROE, or disregarding them” (Wright 230).

Furthermore, a last element that marks a rationalization of the committed crimes is the stress on the lack of individual blame. The soldier stresses that killing is not an individual act, but the result of teamwork. By focusing on the universal unit instead of on the particular soldier, he distances himself from the “uncomfortable inescapability” of his own past (Gibbs

178). He justifies his actions as they were solely a part of the process, there was no individual decision making. A rhetorical device employed to convey this is to use the second plural pronoun ‘we’ instead of ‘I’. In The Yellow Birds Bartle explains how:

[…] and I realized with a great shock that I was shooting at him and that I wouldn’t

stop until I was sure that he was dead, and I felt better knowing we were killing him

together and that it was just as well not to be sure you are the one who did it. (Powers

21)

While this quote literally tackles the distinction between individual killing and teamwork, it does show Bartle reflecting on his actions. He is trying not to blame himself for his acts. In

Generation Kill Wright focuses on a portrayal of the team as a unit as he often uses the personal pronoun ‘we’: “Here, we’re brothers, and we all look out for each other. That’s the best part of being in war. We all get to be together” (336-7). The team is mutually responsible for looking out for each other: “[…] their guerrilla tactics don’t make me feel better about or justify the civilian deaths we’re causing, but these Marines are my brothers” (327). Another technique used comparable to stressing the togetherness of the military unit, is to focus on a resemblance with the Iraqis. Because the soldier sympathizes with the victim, he himself

52 indirectly takes on the victim position as well. Sergeant Espera who is “part Native American, part Mexican and a quarter German” claims to relate to the Iraqis (Wright 114). He stresses that “they live just like Mexicans in Mexico” (295). Thus he transfers the origin of this perpetration from self-blame to blaming the US policy:

“His world-view reflects this self-avowed role as servant in the white man’s empire, a

job he seems to relish with equal parts pride, cynicism and self-loathing. He says,

“The US should just go into all these countries, here and in Africa, and set up an

American government and infrastructure -with McDonald’s, Starbucks, MTV- then

just hand it over. If we have to kill a hundred thousand to save twenty million, it’s

worth it.” He lights his cigar. “Hell, the US did it at home for two hundred years,

killed Indians, used slaves, exploited immigrant labor to build a system that’s good for

everybody today. What does the white man call it? ‘Manifest Destiny’” (Wright 296)

Espera reflects and criticizes US imperialism and false promise of the land of freedom. Here he shows the resemblance to the situation of colored people in US and the oppressed Iraqi.

They are both victims of society, therefore he can relate to the Iraqis.

4.4 Coming Home

This morally ambiguous position of the soldiers, and their claim for victimhood, can be extended to the nature of their trauma. They often experience similar intrusive symptoms as the ones who take the position of the victim. As stated in the first chapter of my dissertation the trauma features are often delayed. The person relives the haunting memories only after an elapse in time. Yet in order to be able to process the paralyzing past the patient needs to give a meaning to these events, which is a delayed understanding. As opposed to Evan Wright,

Kevin Powers explains this theme of intrusive traumatic elements more thoroughly. Powers

53 himself suffered from PTSD, therefore he wants to raise awareness for the distress veterans have to deal with. He stresses that his novel focuses on the protagonist’s morale and revival:

“what I’ve written is not meant to report or document, nor is it meant to argue or advocate.

Instead, I tried with what little skill I have to create the cartography of one man’s consciousness, to let it stand, however briefly, as my reminder” (Powers 240). In Generation

Kill on the contrary, the narrative time and setting is limited to the concrete end of the soldiers’ mission in Iraq. However, Wright did include many records of the Marines claiming that this war will leave a strong impression on their future lives. When the Marines of Fick’s platoon shot a driver because the car was coming too close, they accidently shot a little girl sitting in the backseat. Graves reacts by saying “’This is the event that is going to get to me when I go home’ […]‘I cruised into this war thinking my buddy’s going to take a bullet, and

I’m going to be the fucking hero pulling him out of harm’s way. Instead, I end up pulling out this little girl we shot, hiding in the backseat of her dad’s car.’” (Wright 283). The Marines are already aware that events like this will need a lot of time to be fully processed. Sometimes they try to ease their minds by claiming they will overturn the harm they are doing now: “‘all the pictures Captain America’s taking of shot-up, dead Iraqi kids? I’ll get my hands on those.

I’m going to go back home and put them in Seven-Elevens and collect money for my own adopt-an-Iraqi-kid program. Shit, I’ll be rolling in it. A war veteran helping out the kids.’”

(Wright 257). Nonetheless, Evan Wright does not explore the aftermath of combat in further detail. In this chapter I will focus on Power’s novel The Yellow Birds and connect theoretical concepts such as hyperarousal, intrusion and recovery with textual evidence.

A sense of hyperarousal, as Herman would denote it, is the first stage in the aftermath of intense emotions (Herman 35). In this first phase you are in a conscious state of anxiety and stress. Powers’ protagonist Bartle explains how he feels he is no longer the same person anymore: “I can feel how young I was. I can feel my body before it was scarred. I can reach to

54 my cheek and for a moment remember how the skin was unblemished, then torn.” (Powers

38). All the horror he has witnessed in Iraq scarred his body, consequently the events that tore his body apart still possess his life. Bartle therefore goes through a process of acting-out when he arrives home from combat. The course of acting-out is reflected both mentally and physically: not only is Bartle haunted by nightmares but he is also prone to uncontrollable behavior. A first element discussed in The Yellow Birds is Bartle’s physical reaction to stress.

When sitting in a taxi in Germany, he starts to feel exceedingly anxious:

“As I looked out onto the trees that edged the road, my muscles tensed and I began to

sweat. I knew where I was: a road in Germany, AWOL, waiting for the flight back to

the States. But my body did not: a road, the edge of it, and another day. My fingers

closed around a rifle that was not there. I told them the rifle was not supposed to be

there, but my fingers would not listen, and they kept closing around the space where

my rifle was supposed to be and I continued to sweat and my heart was beating much

faster than I thought was reasonable.” (Powers 54)

His body and mind do not correlate as his hands have the reaction to close around his non- existing rifle. His hand is transported back into the previous situation of intense combat. The fast heart beating and sweat is comparable to how Bartle described the feeling of being in a gunfire: “ […] and every time it began my body told me it couldn’t sustain the tightened muscles and sweat” (Powers 93). He is unable to control his muscles and that causes him to panic even more. Bartle’s stressful behavior was in this situation evoked by a fragment of a memory, yet regularly sound and smell can evoke tension as well. Bartle seems to be aware of that as he says “It was barely perceptible, that noise. I still hear it sometimes. Sound is a funny thing, and smell.” (Powers 84). He is talking about the literal “soft keening” of the Iraqis: how they tried to escape, how they cried from despair, how they wiped away “dried coppery blood on their doorsteps” (Powers 84). Bartle refers to a sound from his memory that haunts him,

55 sound or smell in the present can often instigate past memories. Herman states that sound and smell can directly transport the veteran to the past situation (36). Kevin Powers acknowledges this as Bartle refers to this situation in stating that American rivers remind him of the Tigris:

“Sometimes I will smell the Tigris, unchanged forever in my memory, flowing just as it flowed that day, but it is soon replaced by the cold clear air coming down the mountainside between the mezzanines of mines rolling ever upward.” (Powers 224).

Another central element in the stage of hyperarousal are nightmares. In these nightmares the veteran relives near-death emotions and returns to traumatic scenes. Kevin

Powers’ novel portrays Freud’s concept of “the death-drive”; Bartle often wakes up in a state of fright as he was dreaming about a life-threatening situation back in Iraq. However, most of

Bartle’s nightmares are marked by the presence of his buddy Murphy. When referring back to his first night back home Bartle says: “I don’t remember what I dreamed, but Murph was there, Murph and me and the same ghosts every night. I don’t remember what I dreamed, but I finally slept.” (Powers 112). He acts out his feelings of guilt for not being able to save

Murphy through his interfering nightmares. He relives moments where he should have seen

Murphy mentally breaking down. By doing this Bartle is unconsciously trying to change the past. However, he is unable to do so and remains haunted.

Drunkenness and aggression are two further factors that usually mark the first period of hyperarousal. Because the PTSD patient is feeling so anxious about the new situation of being home and is constantly aware of new dangers he or she often tries to forget everything by using medication, drugs or alcohol. In The Yellow Birds the reader witnesses how

Lieutenant Sterling is trying to ease his sorrows by getting drunk in Germany. Bartle walks into him when he is “shirtless and bleeding a little from the side of his mouth, and in his left hand he held a bottle of some clear liquor”. He is also harassing the young waitress (Powers

65). Sterling explains he feels great being in charge of things again; however, the reader

56 knows this is not the case. Bartle denotes how Sterling has no sense of control: “He was drunk. I’d never seen him like that: on the edge of losing control, morose and somehow sentimental in his own way. It was like you could feel him about to shake loose from something, I wasn’t sure what from, but I didn’t want to be around when it happened.”

(Powers 68). The combination of an excess of new stimuli, the estranging new context at home and the previous loss of all morals easily cause the veteran to react aggressively.

Generation Kill portrays this, as Evan Wright describes how the Marines behaved when their mission was finished. He recounts an incident when fellow Marines were playing a football game. The Marines were getting too upbeat. One soldier shot a man from the opposing team and the others began to hit one another. They were unable to restrain themselves from acting out aggressively towards one another (443-4). The loss of all morals during combat can cause the veterans to have problems adjusting to everyday arguments or problems back in the States.

A second stage of combat aftermath is intrusion. Intrusive elements that haunt the patient’s present life largely characterize PTSD. These elements include flashbacks, which in

The Yellow Birds are characterized by feelings of self-blame and guilt. Bartle relives both his near death experiences as well as his memories with Murphy. He says “Every moment had turned over in my mind since I came back from Al Tafar. Each one unlinked.” (Powers 180).

Bartle experiences an excess of traumatic memories, which is the state that pioneer of trauma studies Pierre Janet explains as the unconscious repetition of unprocessed memories. Bartle claims that each memory comes “unlinked”, this means that the memories are recalled in a disorderly form, thus not chronological. The memories haunt the soldier without any clear context or narrative:

“Back home, everything had begun to remind me of something else. Every thought I

had blossomed outward and backward until it attached itself to some other memory,

that one leading to another, impermanent, until I was lost to whatever present moment

I was in.” (Powers 134)

These flashbacks make the veteran feel as if he has no control over his body or mind anymore, which is a very distressing thought for someone who desperately seeks to have control after the extremes of combat. A rhetorical device that represents this loss of control is the failure of language. This rhetorical device is an alternative representation of how the traumatized person is unable to control his or her mind:

[…] but really it doesn’t matter because in the end you failed at one good thing you

could have done, the one person you promised would live is dead, and you have seen

all things die in more manners than you’d like to recall and for a while the whole thing

fucking ravaged your spirit like some deep-down shit, man, that you didn’t realize you

had until only the animals made you sad, the husks of dogs filled with explosives and

old arty shells and the fucking guts and everything stinking like metal and burning

garbage and you walk around and the smell is deep down into you now and you say,

How can metal be so on fire? and Where is all this fucking rash coming from? and

even back home you’re getting whiffs of it and then that thing you started to notice

slipping away is gone and now it’s becoming inverted, like you have bottomed out in

your spirit but yet a deeper hole is being dug because everybody is so fucking happy to

see you, the murderer […] (Powers 144-5)

There is little punctuation, never a full stop and seldom a capital letter. Bartle simply utters a stream of consciousness, which expresses his helplessness and guilt towards Murphy. This guilt frequently returns throughout the novel. Most of the times Bartle’s reenactment of the past Iraq War experiences serves as an attempt to undo the past: “I haven’t made any progress, really. When I try to get it right, I can’t. When I try to put it out of my mind, it only

58 comes faster and with more force. No peace. So what. I’ve earned it.” (Powers 61). He blames himself for not being able to save his buddy Murphy. When leaving for combat he promised

Murphy’s mom to bring him home alive; however, Murphy’s war spirit slowly diminishes and he turns into a “dead man”. Later on Murphy passes away. This is comparable to Primo

Levi’s concept of survivor’s guilt, which is the feeling of being unworthy of survival because others were not as ‘lucky’. Bartle blames himself for surviving because Murphy did not. He tries to answer the question “why him and not me?”, although, at the same time he realizes he is incapable of doing this, it is a question of faith:

“If only Murph was here, I thought. But Murph was not there. Never would be. I was

alone. Maybe if things had happened a little differently in Al Tafar it could have been

like that. But things happened the way they happened without regard to our desire for

them to have happened another way. Despite an age-old instinct to provide an

explanation more complex than that, something with a level of profundity and depth

which would seem commensurate with the confusion I felt, it really was that simple.”

(Powers 62)

Even though Bartle’s flashbacks often appear unconsciously, most of the time they are consciously evoked. By deliberately returning to the traumatic scene he both tries to create a chronological story as well as undo the past’s mistakes. This is typical for perpetrator trauma.

The veterans are aware that they were not merely victims of a situation; they were part of the system that created it. This situation itself was overwhelming and uncontrollable but the perpetrator still replays his committed crimes over and over again in order to be able to master or justify these events.

An element of the aftermath of trauma particularly linked to perpetrator trauma is the isolation of the veteran. The healing process is belated for the perpetrator as there is a moral

59 resistance to listen to war trauma (Gibbs 171). The soldiers are expected to be either proud of their actions and ought to not question their service, or they are judged for it. However, this latency in reliving the traumatic moments is mostly caused by a mixture of loneliness and shame. The reader picks up on Bartle’s isolation when his mom claims: “’You’ve got to talk to people, John. It’s not good to be by yourself so much.’” (Powers 135). Bartle stays inside his room all the time, does not socialize with his former friends nor does he talk to his mother.

His mom and friends try to make an effort by dragging him to parties or restaurants but Bartle never responds to their offers to help. He explicitly iterates how he feels on a solitary walk:

Shame, I guess. But that wasn’t all of it. It was more particular than that. Anyone can

feel shame. I remember myself, sitting in the dirt under neglected and overgrown bush,

afraid of nothing in the world more than having to show myself for what I had

become. I wasn’t really known around there anyway, but I had the feeling that if I

encountered anyone they would intuit my disgrace and would judge me instantly.

Nothing is more isolating than having a particular history. (Powers 132)

He utters how lonely he feels as he has become someone with a “particular history”. He is no longer the carefree young Bartle that he used to be, he is now alone. In the quote he stresses that people would act disgracefully and judgmental if they knew his history. Though, in other excerpts Bartle emphasizes the reason he feels alone is because no one understands his feelings of guilt: “I feel like I’m being eaten from the inside out and I can’t tell anyone what’s going on because everyone is so grateful to me all the time and I feel like I’m ungrateful or something. Or like I’ll give away that I don’t deserve anyone’s gratitude and really they should hate me for what I’ve done but everyone loves me for it and it’s driving me crazy.”

(Powers 144). Nonetheless, being alienated based on judgment as well as gratitude, causes

Bartle to exclude himself from his present social life. At one point he starts hallucinating while sitting at the riverside, he unconsciously walks into the river and tries to float over the

60 water. When a friend finds him and calls for help, the police do not even bother to do a psychological evaluation, “out of respect for his service” (Powers 147). The police officers drop him off at his house with the affectionate words “try to keep it together buddy”, which offers no help at all. Another element that marks little attention for the soldiers’ trauma was the poor mental care provided in Iraq. When their mission ended Bartle had to fill out a form which served as a mental checkup. The soldiers have to check their morale by ticking off questions such as “After a murder-death-kill, rate your emotional state and indicate it by checking one of the following boxes: A. delighted B. malaise”. If your answers to these questions show that you are unstable “you will be given the opportunity to recuperate”.

Bartle chooses to mark all answers positively, so he can go home as fast as possible (Powers

185-6). This is the only mental check provided by the army forces. There is little care for combat trauma by the American society as well as in military organizations. Because there is no audience for Bartle’s emotions he alienates himself from everyone.

Hence, it can be claimed that the status of the soldier can be split into three main concepts: he can be depicted either as a perpetrator, a victim or a hero. From a close reading of both novels, I would state that the perpetrator status is how the soldier feels, the victim status how he is portrayed, and the heroic status as how the soldiers are seen. To clarify my conception more thoroughly I will use textual evidence of both Generation Kill and The

Yellow Birds, as these stress the divided view in perception of the status of the soldier. The inset novelist Evan Wright and Private John Bartle, the two main protagonists of both novels, utter their frustration concerning the disconnection between the actual men in Iraq and

American society at home. Throughout the various combat descriptions in Generation Kill

Evan Wright already portrays how the Iraq War is highly glamorized by the Bush

Administration. President Bush decontextualizes his foreign policy and transfers the Iraq War into a heroic scenery where his men abroad are the pure translation of patriotism. One of the

61 soldiers in Iraq utters this despair: “Do you think people at home are going to see this- all these women and children we’re killing? Fuck no. Back home they’re glorifying this motherfucker, I guarantee you. Saying our president is a fucking hero for getting us into this bitch. He ain’t even a real Texan.” (Wright 256-7). There is a huge discrepancy between how the soldiers feel about their actions and how the media at home translates those actions.

Another soldier claims how “When I get home people will probably ask me to speak at high schools about this. I don’t know how I’m going to explain all the dead women and children

I’ve seen, the things we’ve done here.” (Wright 286). Soldiers are meant to be proud patriots with an inspirational heroic life in the army, yet the soldiers feel like cruel murderers. In The

Yellow Birds the same criticism towards celebrating warfare can be seen. Bartle takes on a critical attitude towards the initial military training and the myths he was told to believe: “I’d been trained to think war was the great unifier, that it brought people closer together than any other activity on earth. Bullshit. War is the great maker of solipsists.” (Powers 12). Not only the way in which the Bush Administration controlled the media and embossed thoughts of great warfare onto the American public is criticized in Powers’ novel, also the way in which the troops are praised when coming home. In The Yellow Birds an excerpt is cited where

Bartle is flying home from Iraq to Germany. He shows how “The pilot made an announcement when all the passengers had taken their seats. Said how honored he was to be giving an American hero a ride home”, which is making him feel uneasy (Powers 107).

Before getting on the plane he was also offered a free coffee because the bartender said “it’s the least he can do” to show his respect. This respect and praise is making Bartle self- conscious about the fact that his society at home is picturing him as a hero, which is completely in contrast to his feelings of self-criticism. He would rather portray himself as a villain, someone who deliberately killed and destroyed, claiming how “everyone loves me for it and it’s driving me crazy” (Powers 144). Generation Kills shows this same contrast as one

62 of the Marines describes how war is nothing like he expected it to be: “’Words can’t describe how I feel about it, when we came over here, I expected we would do what you would read in history books. We would go through the desert and fight armies. But all we’re seeing are random tactics, guys shooting at us with civilians everywhere…’” (Wright 327). US foreign policy glorifies warfare and turns soldiers into warriors. However, what The Yellow Birds and

Generation Kill show is that most of the veterans do not share these ideals, which causes them to feel isolated.

This feeling of isolation can also be found in the healing process. Isolation causes the veteran to suppress his feelings of despair. Therefore as a last element in this chapter, I will discuss Bartle’s process of recovery. So far, I have explored the way in which intrusive flashbacks and memories characterize Bartle’s life. In addition to Janet’s concept of a traumatic memory there is the contrasting narrative memory: the latter is a memory with a narrative context and is controllable. What Bartle is trying to attain throughout the novel is to grasp this narrative context and make his memories more concrete. Remarkably, Bartle is going through this process of healing all by himself. A turning point in his life is the moment when he is sent to prison. In Iraq, he and Sterling hid Murphy’s body because they wanted his body to have a peaceful end, so they let it float in the Tigris. Additionally Bartle wrote a letter to Murphy’s mother stating that everything was going all right. He has now been punished for these crimes and has to go to prison. Ironically, in prison Bartle finds the time to contemplate his actions and feelings of guilt:

My first few months inside, I spent a lot of time trying to piece the war into a pattern. I

developed the habit of making a mark on my cell wall when I remembered a particular

event, thinking that at some later date I could refer to it and assemble all the marks

into a story that made sense. I still remembered what some of them meant for a long

time afterward: that long chalky scratch below the mirror next to “FTA” stood for that

kid whose head Murph cradled in the orchard as he died… (Powers 216)

He tries to create a pattern of memories that cross his mind in a detached form. By marking each memory Bartle is able to place these events in a chronological order. He is now in the process of what LaCapra would refer to as ‘working-through’: he is trying to register everything. Bartle still mourns his crimes and the loss of his buddy, but these memories no longer haunt him. In order to reach this goal Bartle makes use of a literal ‘blank screen’.

There is no therapist to which he can relate the haunting memories; however, there is a white wall in his prison cell onto which he projects his memories. He aims for a situation in which he is no longer in need of a prison wall onto which he can project his memories:

Had I been confined for another year or two the walls would have been full, there

would have been no marks at all, just a wash, a new patina whitening the walls with

marks of memories, all running together as if the memories themselves aspired to be

the walls in which I was imprisoned, and that seemed just to me, that would have been

a worthy pattern to have. (Powers 218)

He uses the prison walls as a metaphor for the walls of memories in which he feels imprisoned. But if all the memories would be integrated into his present life, the walls themselves would be fully white again. This is how Bartle could start to create new memories and investigate in his social life more. This reintegration in society is also an important factor in the process of healing. While Bartle is first literally alienated from society because he is in prison, when released he will reconnect with everyday life. Crucial in this process is that

Murphy’s mother comes to see Bartle and gives him space to recount his side of the story.

Afterwards he reconnects with his ordinary life again: “I do feel ordinary again. I guess every day because habitual. The details of the world in which we live are always secondary to the

64 fact that we must live in them.” (Powers 224). He assimilates the ungraspable events into his present life and reconnects with himself and society.

5. Conclusion

Although the concepts war neurosis and combat fatigue mark the origins of the contemporary notion of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, the particular trauma of the American veterans is often ignored. The position of the perpetrator is not yet fully explored within the realms of trauma theory, as many consider this an uncertain and therefore delicate area. In the two Iraq

War novels Generation Kill and The Yellow Birds the perpetrator’s perspective as well as the morally ambiguous questions related to perpetrator trauma are thoroughly examined. Both writers depict the soldiers in a likeable and human account, which causes the reader to create an empathic attitude towards the soldiers. By showing their motives and contextualizing the perpetration both Evan Wright and Kevin Powers succeed in offering an intelligible image of soldier trauma. As previously indicated, my dissertation stresses that the status of the soldier can be divided in three positions: a perpetrator how he feels, victim how he is portrayed and hero how he is seen. The soldier takes on an ambiguous position as he can be either criticized or praised for his actions. American society is divided concerning the Iraq War. The propaganda system of Bush’s Administration portrays its war as the embodiment of patriotism and righteous reaction to the 9/11 terrorist attacks on America’s innocence. On the other hand, many other powerful nations and the American soldiers themselves gradually claim the war to be counterproductive and useless. Both novels focus on this split. The American soldiers are welcomed as heroes and praised, but the soldier’s disillusionment concerning his motives causes him to slip into a state of self-blame. This is reflected in the following quote in

Generation Kill: “‘War is either glamorized- like we kick their ass- or the opposite- look how horrible, we all kill these civilians. None of these people know what it’s like to be there holding that weapon’” (Wright 283). Aside from focusing on this contrast, both novels

67 centralize the thoughts and reflections of the soldiers. By interweaving trauma theory and rhetoric devices both Evan Wright and Kevin Powers show the mindset of the soldiers.

In my dissertation, I showed that both regular trauma and evidently more particular perpetrator trauma elements demonstrate how a soldier’s trauma is not that straightforward. It may be stated that Generation Kill is written from the perspective of an outsider, as Evan

Wright is an embedded reporter and not an actual soldier. Kevin Powers’ The Yellow Birds, on the other hand, is a reflective account from the perspective of the “soldier-then versus the writer-now”. This contrast proved to be an interesting starting point for my investigation into the portrayal of the position of the perpetrator. In the close reading it became clear that many concepts characteristic for perpetrator trauma were used in both novels. Evan Wright and

Kevin Powers showed how, in contrast to regular trauma, perpetrator trauma is very subtle.

The chronic exposure to stress causes the soldiers to lose their initial motivation and gradually be overwhelmed by emotions. Fick’s platoon becomes less excited and gradually lets go of the Get Some! war spirit, similarly, Daniel Murphy breaks down into a state comparable to the living dead. Both novels also stress that the haunting intrusive elements are more conscious than unconscious as these are characterized by self-blame and feelings of guilt. The two novels explore this theme in a different way. Generation Kill focuses on the remorse of killing civilians, while The Yellow Birds emphasizes an incident of survivor’s guilt: Bartle fails to save his buddy Murphy. The Yellow Birds centralizes the aftermath of trauma more extremely as the reader follows Private Bartle through his healing process. Furthermore, the position of the perpetrator was more thoroughly examined in the effort to justify the perpetrated crimes.

Evan Wright does this in a distinct way as he uses rhetorical devices, which serve to rationalize the committed crimes; however, he takes on an ambiguous position in doing so. He simply tries to paint a nuanced picture of his platoon; he does not directly place them in the victim position. Wright continues to preserve his neutral stance towards the questions of

68 morality and warfare. While Wright paints a human picture which offers the reader a likeable image of the platoon, Powers gives insight into one soldier’s mind and creates empathy for his alienated position. Both novels explore moral questions and stress the discrepancy between

American society and the Bush Administration back home and the soldiers overseas. This offers the reader a new perspective on how the soldiers feel, rather than on how they are generally seen.

I limited my study to the comparison of Iraq War novels written from different perspectives. However, in line with my findings a further analysis of Iraq War literature would prove interesting to focus on. A research of the difference in Gulf War and Iraq War literature could further examine the position of trauma, particularly linked to the Iraq War. It can also be interesting to browse through Iraqi literature concerning the Iraq War, which could evoke a broader investigation into the deviations in the nature of perpetrator trauma.

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