Why do all war stories seem so realistic? Is it our lack of experience with war? What about war is so untouchable that even works of fiction seem true? Maybe it just says something about the excellence of the fiction piece. While reading Fire And Forget, more often than not, I would finish a short story thinking about the character I had just read about. Wondering how they were doing now. Wondering if they ever told their military spouse they cheated, or wondering if they ever fully re-emerged themselves back into civilian life, or if they even can.
Fire And Forget had this almost magical way of making me feel like I was reading someone’s diary. And yet, every time I finished a story, and breathed a sigh of relief because it was just fiction, a little part of me would think, this isn’t fiction for everyone. For many people the horrible things depicted in these short stories are things they go through on a daily basis. Things they can’t stop reliving, even as a veteran. It makes you step back and think. For every story that shocked me, for every story that saddened me, and for every story that just made me think, I reminded myself that this is someone’s reality. Though this author wrote it as a piece of fiction, there is someone out there living this supposedly fictional story. Maybe not everyone is out there killing the kindest chicken, but there are millions of veterans living a reality we like to think of as fiction.
Fire And Forget shows the harsh reality that as civilians, we like to avoid the issues of veterans and soldiers. Though the title “Fire And Forget” could refer to the soldiers firing weapons, or killing people and not thinking about it, I always thought it was talking about us, the civilians. I figured it was referring to the fact that we sent nearly 1.5 million troops, only to ignore the war, since it didn’t really pertain to us. Growing up, I can count on one, maybe two hands, the number of times people referenced the Iraq War. Because we sent them away, only to forget. We sent troops away to what we pretended was a fictional land, as troops lived a non-fictional life.
More than anything, reading the short stories from Fire And Forget has just reminded me how much I despise war, fictional or not.
First, I totally agree, I hate war, and reading about it has only reminded me how terribly inhumane and pointless it is (especially the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - it can be argued that other wars throughout history, such as WWII, had more of a purpose, but even so, it's my personal belief that war should be avoided at all costs). Second: While reading these stories, I was also struck by how realistic so many of them felt, and I was curious how closely the stories were based off of the authors' personal experiences. Of course, they all had first-hand experience, so the subjects they're writing about are based off of their own experiences, but I wonder how precisely autobiographical some of the stories are. I tried looking at the brief biographies in the back of the book, but they were unhelpful with indicating how closely the characters in the stories align with the writers. I'd be interested to find out more about that. In any case - great post!
ReplyDeleteI like your additional way of reading the collection's title. The fact that our wars tend to be far away, in places most Americans have never visited, makes it much easier to "fire and forget"--to send over troops and lethal munitions and billions of dollars, only to forget all about what the cause or outcome was supposed to be. O'Brien has a great line about this in "On the Rainy River," when he proposes that people should only be able to support a war if they are willing to fight in it themselves or to have their family directly involved. It used to drive me nuts, when G. W. Bush and his administration full of guys who used privilege and other technicalities to evade service in Vietnam, would get all pious about the importance of military service and how unpatriotic it is to criticize a war. None of them risked a thing, personally, for the wars fought by the people represented in this book.
ReplyDeleteAnd many of the stories in this collection are strongly attuned to this vast disconnect between the experiences of people back home and what the troops went through. A number of these narrators feel "fired and forgotten."
I think you make a really interesting point in saying that we "fire" people over there, then kind of forget about them. I don't think that we totally forget about them; we just don't like to think about or accept what is going on. One example for me, personally, is how at church, "our soldiers" or "veterans" is often listed as a petition, or something we pray for. I don't know about everyone else at church, but I never really put much thought into what that meant. Then, when I read this book, whenever I would finish a story, like you, I would try to dismiss it as "just a story." Soon, though, I realized that this isn't just a story: this is actually the type of thing that people go through. Even though we pray for these people, most people in the church probably never knew what they were praying for. Then, even when we are given the opportunity to know what is going on, by reading this book, for example, we want to refuse to believe it is true.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, I feel like there are also situations where people want to be involved so that we can feel like we are involved in this noble cause. For some, it is praying for our troops, for others, it may be sending something overseas (I remember making Christmas cards in elementary school to send). But we don't want to actually acknowledge the brutality of war and what they are experiencing.
Nice post. I think you wrote what a lot of us were thinking. These authors wrote things that they wanted us, civilians to read. We need to hear the things that they still struggle with. We need to not only sympathize, but understand what they are thinking. On your point of wondering why war stories seem so real: I think it is the combination of the fact that we have no real understanding of war, and the fact the people who write war stories, for the most part, are veterans and have real experience with war.
ReplyDeleteI think the brilliance of the title is that it reflects both the actions of its audience and the writers. Like you said, we (though many protested) sent the troops over to Iraq & Afghanistan and continued with our daily lives without hardly any thought of them. They, in turn, were forced to kill without hesitation and then have to live the rest of their lives trying to forget the trauma. I agree that war is an abominable thing, but if anything, I've developed more sympathy for all soldiers and veterans. After firing and forgetting, the least we can do is read their experiences to truly appreciate their service.
ReplyDeleteAs I was reading, I remember thinking about how this book is marked as fictional but still thinking about how the basic outlines of these stories are actually the lives of many veterans. Before this book, I never really read any stories about war or heard too much about it, especially the one I lived during, so it kinda shocked me to see how bad it was for veterans during and after the war.
ReplyDeleteI can totally see the title being seen as launching the troops away and then forgetting about them, but like some people said in the above comments, I'm not sure we actually forgot about them being there. I remember sending cookies to troops during a girl scout meeting when I was in elementary school. However, I think the forgetting can have many meanings. Maybe some people did want to forget we were fighting a war. Maybe some people forgot that these troops had lives and families before the war. Maybe some people wanted these troops to forget their times at war and come back as if nothing had happened, come back the same. Maybe the troops wanted to rid themselves of the memories and feelings that stick with them everyday. Either way, it seems that in each explanation of the "forget", it was wished that the war hadn't happened and that there was some way to erase all the bad parts.
For me when I was reading this book, I didn't really notice that it was a work based on true stories - I knew that was true in the back of my head, but it didn't really hit me until I've almost finished all of the short stories. I had to go back and reread most of the stories in the book, and think how most of these stories were probably based on first or second hand experience. It could be because it was so gruesome, that these pictures each story paints in my head could not have been that awful in real life, that my brain automatically dismissed it as a possibility as one's life story. I also believe that I am not the only one, that many people ignore the war because it doesn't affect our personal lives (like you said). Not only that, I doubt that many people have any sort of sympathy with veterans in general (I am talking about our country in general, not of our class of course). Constantly we see remnants of the war left behind: homeless veterans, veterans missing limbs, veterans who are still in a state of shock, and just many displaced veterans in general after the war. We see these people, yet not many of us have tried to help them. For example, going to Sam's club, there are these two veterans holding up a sign that says, "homeless Veterans, will do anything for a job. God Bless". I've seen these two men, probably buddies who had each other's backs during the war, sit on their backpacks in the same spot for two weeks. Yet I've never seen anyone give them any kind of food, money, or most importantly an opportunity to start a new life. It's not as if they sit in some random corner where no one can see them: they sit on a piece of elevated grass between the "enter" and "exit" points for the store. It also so happens that that was the day I started my summer reading for this class.
ReplyDeleteMuses on popular war: I'm not sure what I think about this being enacted in reality, but these are some responses to the above. It seems that many wars lack direct relevance to the security of American citizens -- by the same token, in the case of World War II, it might be argued that a passive American response would have resulted in terrible destruction by the other sides -- it's hard to say with any certainty, since politician rhetoric always leads to wars "on the safe side". On the other hand, when you have things like genocides happening, or what's going on in Syria, aren't we guilty if we let murderers get away? Should everyone who votes for a war be selected first to serve? Should there be a specific portion of the population who, instead of joining the army in general, joins some kind of volunteer "army that fights for human rights in [fill in the blank]"?
ReplyDeleteThis is a really insightful post. I completely agree that we as civilians send these soldiers to war and forget about them. I myself confess that I don't really think about soldiers that are at war around the world right now. To be honest, I hardly ever even think about the wars themselves. It is easy for us to forget and become complacent about these things because they seem so far away from us. As you said, these things aren't part of our daily lives, and in some ways I think we choose to not remember or think of these things because they make us uncomfortable. Its uncomfortable for us to accept that there are many soldiers out there that we sent to face death, war, terror, and all the other things that we would never want to face ourselves. Reading stories from the veterans' and soldiers' point of views was very eye-opening and brought me back to the reality that I chose to forget about.
ReplyDelete