By Christopher Coker
ISBN-10: 0199382972
ISBN-13: 9780199382972
On account that Achilles first stormed into our mind's eye, literature has brought its readers to actually unforgettable martial characters. In males at battle, Christopher Coker discusses one of the most well-known of those fictional creations and their effect on our figuring out of struggle and masculinity. Grouped into 5 archetypes-warriors, heroes, villains, survivors and victims-these characters variety throughout 3000 years of heritage, via epic poems, the fashionable novel and one of many 20th century's most renowned movie scripts.
Great authors like Homer and Tolstoy convey us points of truth invisible other than via a literary lens, whereas fictional characters reminiscent of Achilles and Falstaff, Robert Jordan and Jack Aubrey, are usually not simply greater than existence; they're life's largeness-and the reason is, we search them out. even though the Greeks knew that the fans, other halves and moms of infantrymen are the executive sufferers of conflict, for the opponents, battle is a masculine pursuit. every one of Coker's chapters explores what fiction tells us approximately war's attract younger males and how it makes- and breaks-them. The existential allure of warfare too might be top conveyed in fictional debts, and those too are scrutinized by means of the writer.
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Additional info for Men At War: What Fiction Tells us About Conflict, From The Iliad to Catch-22
Example text
In the aftermath of Patroclus’ death there is an unseemly debate as to who can claim his armour. Euphorbos insists that it is owed to him (he struck the first blow, after all), but before he can press home his claim he is killed by Menelaus. Hector eventually secures the armour, but Homer cannot resist telling us that the gods think the whole debate unseemly. The Iliad is a much more complex tale than it is often taken to be. Debates are at the centre of the action just as much as the actual killing.
Achilles is not even above challenging Apollo to a fight; he is not in awe of the Gods. It is this ability to choose; to make a stand and pick a fight, that Krishna tells Arjuna is the only release there is from karma. It inheres not in desisting from action but acting regardless of risks and regardless of consequences. Krishna later reveals himself to Arjuna and tells him that the Age of Heroes is coming to an end, just as the Trojan War brings the Greek Heroic Age to a close. He tells him that the outcome of the battle is already decided—just as the gods have decided the fate of Troy.
For the US Military is intent on calling computer hackers ‘cyber warriors’, and drone pilots ‘cubicle warriors’; it seems determined to recycle the concept, even at the risk of devaluing the currency. But even today’s drone pilots may soon become superannuated. For we are about to enter a new world in which robots will range across the battlespace. There is a robot, JAKE-1 (Jungle Automatic Killer— Experimental Model No. 1) which appeared for the first time in Weird Tales (1981), deployed on a Pacific island alongside Marines placed under the control of my namesake, Sgt Coker.
Men At War: What Fiction Tells us About Conflict, From The Iliad to Catch-22 by Christopher Coker
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