It can be successfully argued that literature had its thematic foundation in the depiction of warfare. Certainly the vast majority of ancient oral culture, which has subsequently been preserved in such influential ballads and verse works such as The Iliad and The Song of Roland, centred upon the heroic exploits of warrior-men. Perhaps it could be argued that pre-modern cultures required the stories of such noble fighters as antithetical to their own routine-governed and impoverished existence; more plausibly, hero worship was a form of life affirmation. The myth of the hero allowed a culture to assert its authenticity in face of opposition from other societies. Myths will never exceed that function, they are neither representative of any ‘truth’, nor can they can not approximate reality. The twentieth century has proven itself to be the destroyer of old mythologies. War does not produce heroes, in fact in very few instances is it creative. This fact was true of ancient warfare, where any real instances of heroic behaviour were greatly overshadowed by mythological exaggeration. Few heroic myths emerged from twentieth century warfare however, where individual valour was defeated by mechanized means of slaughter. Modern writers who depict war consequently inform their narratives with the knowledge that the atrocities of war overwhelm heroism. Christa Wolf’s re-interpretation of the Trojan siege perfectly exemplifies such modern conventions. Faced with the near extermination of her people, Cassandra addresses the metaphysical aspects of war: who is the enemy? and why is war necessary? It is the first question which seems to be the prime substance of the text, as Cassandra questions the rigidity of the defined binaries of us-and-them. Indeed, it becomes readily apparent that there is no true distinction, as the Other of enemy exists within and its essence is assumed. The appropriation of the Other is made even more clear in Barbara Gowdy’s Disneyland, which depicts the source of Cold War hostilities as most fundamentally domestic in nature. Underlying each of the texts is the feeling of female helplessness caused by the despotic rule of a patriarchal society. Furthermore, both texts share a similar ideology about warfare, and one which has almost become cliché in the nuclear age. It is not the Other which is the true enemy, but warfare itself.
Cassandra is unique among literary characters involved in warfare in that she can foresee the outcome of the conflict. This gift of prophecy allows her to ignore the routine concerns of surviving a siege – such specifics remain irrelevant when one knows one’s fated destruction – and instead philosophize about the Trojan war, and indeed of the ontological essence of warfare in general. The details concerning the origins of the war are outlined: as with all wars the siege at Troy began due to political and economic contestations, obscured with the guise of a dispute over Helen. Cassandra makes it clear that such origins become unimportant in war, they first become mythologised to justify hostilities, then ultimately forgotten as the fighting persists year after year. Mythologised origins of war can in fact be used by rulers to consolidate their power; in their own narratives they are the only leaders who can defeat the enemy. Priam had done this by making himself the “almighty king” (Cassandra, p. 65) who stood against the Greeks, and similarly when he had his dream interpreted by Panthous to support the war effort. The factual origins at the base of such mythologisation quickly disappear however, to be replaced solely by illusion. At Troy, Helen became the means by which the Trojan soldiers could be “raised ... beyond themselves” (p. 68) to fully believe in the ambitions of the conflict. Notably, Helen-as-woman became the symbol for Trojan pride in the war, for as Anchises stated she represented a more noble ideal to which they could aspire than the earthly vices of political and economic greed. Ultimately however, every reason for going to war was rejected as battle continued over the course of a decade. While they had once idolized her as an emblem of nationalistic ambition, the soldiers began to hate Helen, just as the Greeks began to hate Menelaus because his wife had been taken from him. In their desperation the Trojan war council misguidedly turned to the glorification of living heroes over respecting dead ones in an attempt to maintain the discipline and morale of the army. Cassandra notes the fallacy of such a belief, a lie which will in fact shatter the unity of the Trojans: “But don’t you see how much more dangerous it is to agitate the foundations of our unity carelessly!” (p. 101). It was the desire for glory and honour which allowed the Trojans to be led into war despite Cassandra’s advancing of several possible solutions: “If you can stop being victorious, this your city will endure” (p. 116). She can not understand that Troy would destroy itself to maintain its honour, yet she remains powerless to act against the stubbornness of the Trojans. In this context can be understood the tragedy of her curse as a prophet ignored by her people.
When she recognizes the inevitability that Troy will indeed fall, Cassandra begins to question the distinctions between her people and the Greeks. Initially, people in times of war define themselves quite rigidly as either friendly or enemy – the binary of us-and-them. In this manner it is quite easy to determine right from wrong: right is all actions taken by us, wrong is all of those taken by them. There can not be any deviation from such rigid moralistic boundaries. At Troy therefore, the ruling of the war council is not only completely right, but also wholly just and virtuous. Priam makes this fact quite clear to Cassandra: “Anyone who does not side with us now is working against us” (p. 70). Cassandra is quick to challenge these boundaries, however, as she recognizes that warfare frequently provides for the most demonstrable instances of the deconstructivist ideology of a Self and an Other. Such a theoretical model is of course never explicitly remarked upon by Cassandra, yet it remains tacit in her meditations. The Self needs the Other for its very definition, as “man cannot see himself, ... he needs the alien image” (p. 124). Consequently each assumes the essence of the other and the boundary between definitions is ambiguous. In terms of national conflict, countries use the existence of enemy nations to define and unite their people. Frequently however, the very connotations applied to the enemy are self-reflexive. In order to justify hostilities, the enemy is referred to in slanderous terms – “mental armament consisted in defamation of the enemy” (p. 63) – and indeed these nominations are interchangeable and adaptable as defined enemies fluctuate: the murderous Greeks, the cruel Spartans, and for a much later generation the vicious Russians and inhuman Germans. Adjectives such as these are largely arbitrary and can change with shifting political or economic ambitions. “Guest-friends” (p. 55) can degrade to “friend” and finally to enemy with little trouble. Examples are subsequently given as proof of the blood-thirst and wickedness of the enemy. The Greeks are murderous and treacherous, evidenced by Achilles brutality on the battlefield, and indeed deception and wiliness become their particular characteristic as personified in Odysseus. Cassandra herself does not believe in such simple denotations, but instead comes to understand that the Trojans have assumed the characteristics of their enemy. She notices that the Greeks do not differ from her own people first when she was able to converse with captive Greeks, later when she was allowed into their ranks and was allowed to observe them more intimately, and finally when she is herself held captive by the Greeks. They were not barbarous; many like Odysseus did not in fact want to go to war. Such knowledge liberates Cassandra from the propaganda sermonized by the war council: “We were supposed to smite the enemy, not to know him! ... They are like us!” (p. 13). For this reason, deserters and spies like Calchas are more even hated than enemy soldiers, as they are a painful reminder that the Self identifies quite intimately with the Other.
The actions of the war council frequently confirm the ambiguity of enemy and friend to Cassandra. To win the war they will use any means, including the trade of their women for specific gains. Polyxena is used as a lure to expose Achilles to an ambush; later Cassandra is sold to a war chief in exchange for soldiers. Polyxena herself illustrates the fact that the process of identifying with the enemy is also a process of becoming a victim, the Other defeated by the Self. At this point in the text Cassandra realizes that in fact the Trojans were guilty of the same barbarity of which they charged the Greek army. Indeed, after her return from the Greek camp – where she was treated with a greater dignity and civility than at Troy – Cassandra notes that it is the ignorance of the Trojans that allows them to become so violent and assume the enemy’s characteristics. Eumelos’s tyrannical suppression of Trojan liberties in defence of the city perfectly exemplifies the hypocrisy of the war council, where “the duty to kill [their] worst enemy, ate up the right” (p. 127). It was believed that the survival of their city was more important than truth or liberty, and that in such desperate times “everything that would apply in peace was rescinded” (p. 84). Eumelos subjected Troy to a strict regulation which forced them to literally assume the role of enemy captive under Trojan martial law. Cassandra viewed Eumelos’s totalitarianism as far more barbaric than captivity among the Greeks, where she believed that she was “free to express [herself]” (p. 116). The Self and the Other, the us-and-them, are in fact one and the same; the basic fallacy of warfare is that this truth is rejected. Cassandra attempts to end the war by persuading Priam to accept this truth; her tragedy is that no one will listen to her. It is not merely the curse imparted on her by Apollo that causes the Trojans to ignore her pleas for revealing this truth. One of the most difficult aspects of human existence is the recognition that evil is within, and not a distinct and antagonistic enemy that can be defeated. Troy itself falls because this fact is never recognized by either its leaders or its people.
The Cold War of the twentieth century adequately illustrates the rejection – or in psychoanalytical terms, the projection – of evil in the Self, which is then externalized in the Other. The Western world identified itself as the harbinger of a peaceful and justly democratic world in opposition to the communist aggression of the eastern Soviet bloc. The Communists led by Russia were identified as barbarous tyrants who repressed their populations and sought to extend their rule throughout the world. Against such expansion, the west had to contain communism by extending the justice of democracy. Certainly the latent hypocrisy of such a conflict, and its existence as a mutually dependant binary relationship, does not elude modern authors. Barbary Gowdy’s Disneyland demonstrates the mutuality of Soviet-North American relations during the Cold War. The bomb shelter built by the father is a convention of North American fears of Soviet induced nuclear war which itself assumes aspects of the enemy. Most obviously, it is run in the same manner as a Soviet commune. The necessities of life are distributed by a ruling elite, which in this instance is the father. Just like communism itself, the communistic ideals of the bomb shelter attempt to provide a precisely organized society which allows for the highest possible quality of life. These ideals were quickly destroyed in both cases when the ruling elite began to retain possession of needed goods such as food, or alternately by mismanagement of the resources available. In Gowdy’s text this destruction of the ideal occurs when the father miscalculates the amount of water required to sustain his family in the shelter for fourteen days. Rationing becomes ever more strict as the water supplies continue to dwindle. The failure of such a logistical ideal is indeed the essence of Gowdy’s implicit criticism of the Cold War mentality. The bomb shelter itself is an unattainable ideal, as in the event of an actual nuclear bombardment it would not protect its inhabitants. The items brought into the shelter are equally useless: a shovel would not be an adequate means of digging through any fallen buildings which may bury the shelter, nor would a bow and arrow be of use as any game that could be hunted would have been killed in the bombing.
Much like Eumelos in Cassandra, the shelter becomes the means of self oppression and victimization in defence against the Other. The girls themselves quite literally become victims encased within the tomb-like bomb shelter. Their father quickly becomes the means by which such victimization is actualized, as it is within his character that the internalization of the Other is most apparent. A state of war continually exists within him: “We’ll be living as if the bomb’s dropped ... there’s radiation up there” (Disneyland, pp. 55-6). Indeed, within this context can be asked the same question that Cassandra had not resolved, namely “You can tell when a war starts, but when does the prewar start?” (Cassandra, p. 66). The Other is readily dehumanized to justify its status as enemy; enemy peoples are not represented as complex characterizations but as cut-out surface characteristics. Non-whites and non-North Americans become objects of derision, and in this way it is believed that they lose their power of influence over the Self. Accordingly, the father believes that he is disarming Russians and Negroes by laughing at them: “You’re a sap, Mister Jap” (pp. 58-9). Very early in the text the father has assumed in himself the Cold War stereotypes of Soviet repression, and indeed for this reason himself becomes an object of ridicule. He treats his family as they were a military regiment, drilling them in proper air-raid defence. Indeed, the itinerary that the family is to follow, called The Regime by the girls, is as strictly organized as that of a military barrack. When they function well within this structure, their father praises them for acting like “a smooth-running machine, ... a crack squad, ... troopers” (Disneyland, p. 65). The structure can not adequately operate for long however, as it is far too repressive of individuality, and arguably of human nature itself. To retain its authority it begins to suspect its populace of treason and acting against its interests. Consequently, the father begins to suspect his daughters of scheming against his exertions, of “undermin[ing] the whole exercise” (p. 69). His suspicions were of course justified, as the girls were indeed endeavouring to escape from the repressive authority of the shelter. In this manner the system itself justifies repression while precipitating resistence among its subjects. The Self becomes violently suppressive, and consequently the father lashes out at Lou for intimating his weakness during a game of Scrabble. Despite the common Cold War belief that Communism was the primary corrupting influence of the human race, especially on young and impressionable minds, it is in fact the father himself who corrupts his children. He allows them to be sedated with alcohol, and is himself far too drunk to function as a parent. By the end of the text the father had fully internalized the Cold War stereotypes of the Other. Despite exiting from the bomb shelter to return to “home, sweet home”, he remains in a state of war: “his eyes were triumphant, crazy, miserable” (p. 72). Victory is defeat as the Self represses itself to defeat the Other. One can only infer the nature of the torment that he could still inflict on his family after this experience.
It must be emphasized that both Cassandra and Disneyland are just texts themselves, and are not wholly above the mythology they present. While they both can contribute to a preference for an anti-war mentality, arguably there has been no greater motivator for peace-research than the creation and deployment of nuclear weapons. The sheer power of these devices – strong enough in fact to destroy entire cities – forced a majority of people in the latter twentieth century to re-evaluate their notions of armed conflict. No longer could war be justified as a battle between the good-of-us and the evil-of-them. This century has proven that there are no limits to human cruelty, and also that the “evil” which allows such cruelty exists in all humans. The enemy no longer was a separate entity to be defeated, it was no longer Achilles deployed by the Greeks or the hydrogen bomb deployed by the Russians. The Trojans proved that they were just as capable of slaughtering the Greeks as Achilles, just as North Americans during the Cold War could have deployed their own hydrogen bombs. The danger inherent in warfare, especially when it is based on a conflict of moralities, is that in attempting to defeat the enemy one becomes the enemy. Once the Self acknowledges the presence of and a mutuality with the Other, only two options are available: peace or self-destruction.
Bibliography
Gowdy, Barbara. Disneyland. Falling Angels. Toronto: Somerville House, 1989.
Wolf, Christa. Cassandra: A Novel and Four Essays. New York: The Noonday Press, 1996.
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