The Killer Angels - a post-Vietnam war novel?

Before we move on to focusing on to Major General John Buford, I will note that it is interesting to read this book as a post-Vietnam War book (technically, I suppose the book was being written even while that conflict was still raging). Gettysburg has become such a pivotal and mythical battle in the American psyche and this book in particular has shaped our modern understanding of the battle and the men who fought it. But Shaara seems very much to be making a point about how we understand war, those who fight in it, those who lead us to it.

In Chapter 4, which I will be posting about some time soon, he has an exchange between Longstreet and Lewis Armistead, and Armistead has bought into the idea that the South cannot be beaten because there is a Cause and because their boys are special. After comparing this conflict to the Crusades, Longstreet's response is "they never took Jerusalem" and "it takes a bit more than morale."

There were so many who believed that sheer force of will would bring us victory in Vietnam. And, obviously, there are those who believe the same about victory in Iraq. It is striking to compare these observations with those who believe that a cause and mission is all that is needed to win armed conflicts. Of course it is important to impart a sense of mission to soldiers, to make sure they know that they are fighting for something worthwhile. But that sense of mission needs to coupled with competence and strategy - and I think we failed in Vietnam in doing that and we are failing to do so in Iraq.

The Killer Angels, Chapter 2 - Michael Shaara

Chapter 2 - Chamberlain

Chapter 2 focuses on Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, trying to recover from sunstroke because he's from Maine and he walked too much the day before. Chamberlain has been informed that he is to take in a group of Mainers who are "mutineers." The mutineers had signed off for three years of service but their unit's enlistment had ended in two years. The 120 men still owe one year of volunteer service to the Army. Chamberlain is told to take them in, that he can do what he wants with them, and if they don't serve, he can shoot them. He knows he won't shoot them. He'd never be able to return to Maine if he did.

After they are brought to Chamberlain, he speaks to one of their number who has elected to speak for them, Joseph Bucklin. Bucklin represents an interesting counterpoint to the spy of the previous chapter:

...Bucklin said, "I'm tired, Colonel. You know what I mean? I'm tired. I've had all of this army and all of these officers, this damned Hooker and this god-damned idiot Meade, all of them, the whole bloody, lousy rotten mess of sick-brained potbellied scabheads that ain't fit to lead a johnny detail, aint fit to pour pee outen a boot with instructions on the heel. I'm tired. We are good men and we had our own good flag and these damned goddamned idiots use us like we was cows or dogs and even worse. We aint gonna win this war. We can't win no how because of these lame-brained bastards from West Point, these goddamned gentlemen, these officers. One one officer knew what he was doin: McClellan, and look what happened to him. I just as soon go home and let them damn Johnnies go home and the hell with it."

Putting aside the notion that McClellan actually knew what he was doing, Bucklin could represent all soldiers in all wars, not the least of which is the current conflict in Iraq. Soldiers get tired and they don't understand what they are fighting and those who are supposed to making the right decisions make the wrong ones. And the people who suffer for it are the soldiers themselves.

A little later in the chapter, though, Chamberlain ruminates on the answer to what they are fighting for:

...The faith itself was simple: he believed in the dignity of man... He had grown up believing in America and the individual and it was a stronger faith than his faith in God. This was a land where no man had to bow. In this place at last a man could stand up free of the past, free of tradition and blood ties and the curse of royalty and become what he wished to become. This was the first place on earth where the man mattered more than the state. True freedom had begun here and it would spread eventually all over the earth. But it has begun here. The fact of slavery upon this incredibly beautiful new clean earth was appalling, but even more than that was the horror of old Europe, the curse of nobility, which the South was transplanting to new soil. They were forming a new aristocracy, a new breed of glittering men, and Chamberlain had come to crush it. But he was fighting for the dignity of man and in that way he was fighting for himself. If men were equal in America, all these former Poles and English and Czech and blacks, then they were equal everywhere, and there was really no such thing as a foreigner; there was only free men and slaves. And so it was not even patriotism but a new faith. The Frenchman may fight for France, but the American fights for mankind, for freedom; for the people, not the land.

It is an extraordinary passage, especially through the light of today's politics. For one, the idea that Chamberlain's faith in American democracy is greater than his faith in God would run right up to those on the Christian Right who seek to tie those two things together. Secondly, the hatred of aristocracy as a rationale for fighting, even in an era in the U.S. where we seem to be trading presidential candidates from two families. And finally, the idea that the immigrants - the Poles, the Czechs, the English, the blacks etc. - can be just as American, and fight for the same ideals as those who are native born. And that they fight for the people, not the land.

Chamberlain eventually gets the men to fight, by expressing the sentiments he does above. And while the speech is described as inspirational, it is clearly the above passage that is the heart and soul of the chapter and Chamberlain's character. All but 6 of the mutineers decide to fight for Chamberlain's company, as they head out towards Gettysburg.

The Killer Angels, Chapter 1 - Michael Shaara

Chapter 1

Chapter 1 begins with a spy, a would-be actor, spying the movements of the Union Army. He is bringing this information back to Lt. General James Longstreet, right hand man to General Lee. The spy is not liked by Longstreet, and he is initially doubted, but eventually Longstreet takes him to Lee to communicate the information he has.

What comes through in this chapter is how feckless the spy, who the chapter is named after, is and how anxious and worried Longstreet seems to be:

If the spy was right, the army was in great danger. They could be cut apart and cut off from home and destroyed in detail, piece by piece. If the spy was right, then Lee would have to turn, but the old man did not believe in spies nor in any information you had to pay for, had not approved of the money spent or event the idea behind it. And the old man had faith in Stuart, and why in God's name had Stuart sent nothing, not even a courier, because even Stuart wasn't fool enough to let the whole damned Army of the Potomac get this close without word, not one damned lonesome word...

It seems that Lee believes in his standards but this is war, and Longstreet recognizes that to win a war, you have to do things that violate one's standards. On the other hand, we get a sense that the spy's commitment is less to the cause of the South and more to his own desire to act. Still, his commentary on how he acquires information is interesting:

The spy chatted amiably. He seemed to need to talk. He was saying, "Strange thing about it all, thing that bothers me is that when you do this job right, nobody knows you're doing it, nobody ever watches you work, do you see?...This current creation, now, is marvelous. I'm a poor-witted farmer, do you see, terrified of soldiers, and me lovely young wife has run off with a drummer and I'm out a-scourin' the countryside for her, a sorrowful pitiful sight I am. And people lookin' down their noses and grinnin' behind me back and all the time tellin' me exactly what I want to know about who is where and how many and how long ago, and them not even knowin' they're doin's it, too busy feelin' contempuous. There are many people, General, that don't give a damn for a human soul, do you know that? The strange thing is, after playing this poor fool farmer for a while I can't help but feel sorry for him. Because nobody cares."

One the one hand, the spy articulates in the last sentence the same sentiments that Rick in Casablanca does when he tells Ilsa that this crazy world doesn't care a hill of beans about the problems of three small people. It's war. Who cares about a farmer looking for his runaway wife when the war is in everyone's front yards. And it is hard not to understand where he is coming from with that.

On the other hand, this guy is able to get self-righteous about their lack of care even while he is taking advantage of it and "betraying" them with the information he is gathering. He's a spy. He's at risk, true, but one is somewhat able to understand why he is looked down upon by military folk because his way of fighting the war it is all about subterfuge and obfuscation. Therefore, it is difficult to understand how he feels superior to those that he perceive feel superior to him since he is precisely trying to take advantage of their normal human feelings.

The chapter ends without the spy, but with Longstreet and Lee discussing the information that they have, especially the news that Meade has been named the general of the Army of the Potomac. And the discovery that the town on the map that they will concentrate their forces on is Gettysburg.

The Killer Angels - Foreword, Part II

The rest of the foreword tells about the men of Gettysburg, men who will become synonymous with victory or defeat in this pivotal battle. As with practically any story based on the Civil War, it is easy to come away marveling at the fact that the Union won given the competency on the Confederacy's side. We are still many months away from Grant's elevation and since I believe he was in Vicksburg at the time, he makes no appearance whatsoever at Gettysburg.

Lee has always been inscrutable to me and this description provides no exception. Shaara describes him as "the most beloved man in either army" but also "an honest man, a gentlman. He has no 'vices.' He does not drink or smoke or gamble or chase women. He does not read novels or plays; he thinks they weaken the mind. He does not own slaves nor believe in slavery, but he does not believe that the Negro, 'in the present stage of his development,' can be considered the equal of the white man. He is a man in control. He does not lose his temper nor his faith; he never complains... He believes absolutely in God. He loves Virginia above all, the mystic dirt of home." He is, in short, a paragon of a man who fights for an unjust, inhumane system. He also fights for the losing side.

Lee is juxtaposed against his subordinates, Longstreet, Pickett, etc. all of whom seem more like real men than Lee. They are men with flaws, be it of temper or temperment or chasing women or drinking.

With the men in blue, it is not difficult to understand why Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain becomes the hero of this piece (okay, I confess, I have seen Gettysburg and, of course, I know the history). Against George Meade and Winfield Hancock, Chamberlain at least seems like he has some prayer of understanding of what needs to be done. To be fair, Shaara gives credit both to John Buford and John Reynolds, too, as fighting men who got what it would take to win this war.

At the end of the day, it seems, the Confederacy had a great general in Lee but not enough men like Chamberlain, Buford, and Reynolds. And the Union did not have a good general until later, but could hold with superior men and some competent lower level leaders.

The Killer Angels, Michael Shaara - Foreword Part I

So, I gave up on The Optimist's Daughter. Sorry, Eudora, I just wasn't compelled to pick it up even though it is a short book and I had already read half of it.

In between not finishing The Optimist's Daughter and beginning The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara, I read Nathaniel Philbrick's Mayflower. I highly recommend it. It is a very readable but complex history of the Plymouth Colony during its founding and then through King Philip's War. For anyone interested in reading about early American history and New England's role in it, Mayflower is a must.

The Foreword of The Killer Angels makes a fascinating point about the Confederate and Union armies. Shaara writes, "It is an army of seventy thousand men. They are rebels and volunteers. They are mostly unpaid and usually self-equipped. It is an army of remarkable unity, fighting for disunion. It is Anglo-Saxon and Protestant..."

In contrast, he describes the Union army as "a strange new kind of army, a polyglot mass of vastly dissimilar men, fighting for union. There are strange accents and strange religions and many who do not speak English at all. Nothing like this army has been seen upon this planet. It is a collection of men from many different places who have seen much defeat and many commanders."

What to make of this contrast? Both armies represent some element of America - our past, what was necessary to create a strong foundation: a group of individuals from similar backgrounds, similar religions, who drew on similar beliefs and ideologies to establish a nation out of the wilderness. And our present and future: men who came to this country and fought for it not because they shared the same background as those who established it, but because they so bought into the idea of the United States.

It is something to be reminded of in these days, while we continue to struggle with the American identity. It is also an important and useful reminder that what has made this nation strong is our ability to be inclusive not exclusive.

The Optimist's Daughter, Part II, Chps. 1 - 4

As I said, this book would not have been my choice to lead off this experiment. It is not that I find it difficult reading - I am just not all that compelled to pick it up once I have put it down. But big thanks to my friends at OTB for their encouragement, since so many of them were so excited by the idea.

Part II:

Part II is dominated by the return of Judge McKelva to his home - for the wake and the funeral.

These scenes will be familiar to anyone who has lost a loved one, especially for any child who has lost a parent. On the day after my father passed away, his entire family (at least the feminine part of it, anyway) - sisters, sisters-in-law, nieces - all descended upon our home, to clean, mostly, and cook. To console in their own way. It was a nice gesture, in its way, but to some extent an intrusion, too. Still, it is an example of the kind of dynamics that surround mourning, which Welty illustrates in this section. While clearly deeply rooted in her Southern upbringing, these scenes have a universal feel to them.

The section is dominated by two moments - one, the arrival of Fay's family, the Chisom's. It is fairly apparent, even before the narrator tells us:

Laurel closed her eyes, in the recognition of what had made the Chisoms seem familiar to her. They might have come out of that night in the hospital waiting room - out of all times of trouble, past or future - the great, interrelated family of those who never know the meaning of what has happened to them...

that the family is the New Orleans hospital are a warning of things to come. Fay had lied to Laurel earlier, claiming all of her relatives were dead and at first, she does not seem pleased to see them. But, by the end of the section, she is taking an impromptu trip to Texas with them because she wants to be with people who "speak her language." Much of that language is regarding her prospective inheritance of the McKelva home.

The second scene that dominates is during the viewing that takes place in the home. Again, anyone who has ever attended a wake will recognize the story-telling of the recently departed that takes place here. But Laurel is particularly perturbed by some of the stories being shared by Major Bullock, an old friend of her father's. She thinks he is spreading a false impression of her father, as a man prone to dramatics and grandiosity. She insists her father really was modest. She feels her father's life is more in danger now, in death, as being portrayed differently than it was.

As an aside, I think that this is both an interesting and true comment - the lives of those who died are left up to how those who left perceive them, even if the one who has passed on has left some legacy - written or otherwise. And in a sense, their "true" lives are in danger since the tendency is either to deify or demonize. However, that is also certainly part of the ritual of death, especially during that period immediately following a loss. Laurel's struggle to have her father perceived "truly" is understandable but a bit of a lost cause at the wake. And, in any case, there is no reason to believe that Laurel's perceptions of the Judge are any truer than Major Bullock's.

As stated, the house is becoming a bone of contention. Additionally, we are getting some glimpse into Laurel’s mother, Becky. She had a closed casket, for some mysterious reason not yet named. And she is the one that Laurel can envision taking on the KKK, in direct and dramatic fashion, not the Judge (as was the point of Major Bullock's story).

The Optimist's Daughter, Part 1, Chapters 1 - 4

I confess, I was disappointed when I first saw that The Optimist's Daughter, by Eudora Welty, was number one on the list. I have never really gotten into Southern fiction as a literary genre. On top of that, I had read this book before, the summer before I went to college, and it hadn't really made a huge impression on me. In fact, just last winter, I sold my copy to a used bookstore. But here I am, having bought it back from the same used book store, reading it.

It begins in New Orleans, in a hospital. (As an aside, reading about hospital rooms in New Orleans reminds me of those who were stranded there - both in the city and in the hospitals - during Katrina). Laurel McKelva has returned to the South to help her father, Judge McKelva, who is having trouble with his eye. Judge McKelva is the optimist of the book's title. Laurel's mother is dead and her father has married Fay, a classic gold-digger if ever one was presented in literature. The first section of the book presents the reader with the aftermath of the Judge's operation.

His recovery takes place during the period leading up to Mardi Gras, and throughout the chapters, the reader is well aware of the contrast between the revelry outside and the somberness inside the hospital.

The Judge, the optimist, is failing and his failing appears to be somewhat willful. That is certainly the impression that Fay, who wants to join the party outside, has. This part of the book culminates with Fay attacking her husband in his hospital bed. While waiting to see what happens - both to the Judge and to Fay - we are also treated to a family straight out of Southern caricature but one with whom Fay feels a kinship, while Laurel does not. Chapter 4 closes with the Judge's death and with Laurel and Fay returning his body, by train, to Mississippi.