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domestic grief than both World War I and World War II and all the other wars combined, and the impact of this experience was enough to make for a major turn or trope in American literature. Both Mailer and Hemingway understood this level of trauma. More important, both writers understood the Hegelian dialectical dimensions of how military history, and the psychological and micro-machinations of those in power, are manifested in the outcomes of their actions. For example,while the astronomical casualty rates during the spring and summer of 1864 were the direct results of the Richmond and Atlanta campaigns by Grant and Sherman and by Lee’s and the Confederate’s defense of them, the indirect causes resided in the psyche of the commanding generals and their resulting actions.In other words, Grant and Lee’s personalities drove the war and the war’s consequences drove the trauma. | domestic grief than both World War I and World War II and all the other wars combined, and the impact of this experience was enough to make for a major turn or trope in American literature. Both Mailer and Hemingway understood this level of trauma. More important, both writers understood the Hegelian dialectical dimensions of how military history, and the psychological and micro-machinations of those in power, are manifested in the outcomes of their actions. For example,while the astronomical casualty rates during the spring and summer of 1864 were the direct results of the Richmond and Atlanta campaigns by Grant and Sherman and by Lee’s and the Confederate’s defense of them, the indirect causes resided in the psyche of the commanding generals and their resulting actions.In other words, Grant and Lee’s personalities drove the war and the war’s consequences drove the trauma. | ||
In Hemingway’s writing, his historical perspective of the Civil War is most pronounced. Throughout his life, Hemingway was a student of military history. Moreover, both his grandfathers were participants in the Civil War. His paternal great uncles George and Rodney and his grandfather Anson participated in the Civil War by joining various volunteer Illinois units, the Eighteenth Illinois Infantry and the Chicago Board of Trade regiment. Anson was the only Hemingway brother to survive the war | In Hemingway’s writing, his historical perspective of the Civil War is most pronounced. Throughout his life, Hemingway was a student of military history. Moreover, both his grandfathers were participants in the Civil War. His paternal great uncles George and Rodney and his grandfather Anson participated in the Civil War by joining various volunteer Illinois units, the Eighteenth Illinois Infantry and the Chicago Board of Trade regiment. Anson was the only Hemingway brother to survive the war.{{sfn|Nagel|1996|p=8-9}} Hemingway’s maternal grandfather Hall also served in some capacity during the Civil War, but his experience does not seem to be as direct as Hemingway’s had been. In Hemingway’s library, he possessed several classics of Civil War history, including the Bruce Catton histories. | ||
The Civil War is alluded to in ''Across the River and into the Trees'' specifically and primarily in the title, which comes from the dying last words of General Stonewall Jackson: “Let us cross over the river and rest in the shade of the trees” | The Civil War is alluded to in ''Across the River and into the Trees'' specifically and primarily in the title, which comes from the dying last words of General Stonewall Jackson: “Let us cross over the river and rest in the shade of the trees”.{{sfn|Robertson, Jr.|1997|p=753}} This title sets the melancholic tone for the whole novel. Colonel, formerly General, Richard Cantwell is spending his last few days on earth alive in the town he loves the most in life,Venice, immediately after World War II. While Jackson’s are not the dying words of Cantwell, there is a symmetrical connection. Right before he dies from a final heart attack, Cantwell tells his driver, aptly named Jackson, “I am now going to get into the large back seat of this god-damned, over-sized luxurious automobile”.{{sfn|Hemingway|1950|p=307}} This very reductive, modern statement,lacking in the poetry of Stonewall Jackson’s last words, is to be expected since even the book’s title is itself a reductive paraphrase of the Civil War general’s | ||
{{pg|83|84}} | {{pg|83|84}} | ||
famous last words. Eight decades after Jackson’s death at Chancellorsville, | famous last words. Eight decades after Jackson’s death at Chancellorsville, | ||
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This contrast with Stonewall Jackson excruciatingly reveals the true timber of Richard Cantwell’s ignominious fate. Jackson’s biographer James I. Robertson, Jr., writes that | This contrast with Stonewall Jackson excruciatingly reveals the true timber of Richard Cantwell’s ignominious fate. Jackson’s biographer James I. Robertson, Jr., writes that | ||
<blockquote>[d]eath removed [Jackson] from the scene at the apogee of a military fame enjoyed by no other Civil War figure. His passing at a high point in Confederate success was the ultimate offering for the Southern cause. Death at the hour of his most spectacular victory led to more poems of praise than did any other single event of the war. Jackson was the only officer to be pictured on | <blockquote>[d]eath removed [Jackson] from the scene at the apogee of a military fame enjoyed by no other Civil War figure. His passing at a high point in Confederate success was the ultimate offering for the Southern cause. Death at the hour of his most spectacular victory led to more poems of praise than did any other single event of the war. Jackson was the only officer to be pictured on | ||
Confederate currency, and his likeness graced the most expensive note issued in Richmond: a $500 bill. | Confederate currency, and his likeness graced the most expensive note issued in Richmond: a $500 bill.{{sfn|Robertson, Jr.|1997|p=ix}}</blockquote> | ||
No such fame became of Cantwell, who led a gallant and purposeful life in the service of his army. Much of this contrast rests in the fact that Civil War veterans had been highly revered in American culture a half century before World War I and later World War II. Although veterans from World War II have been more celebrated than veterans from the First World War, neither of them have been as mythologized as much as the Civil War veterans from both sides of the conflict. | No such fame became of Cantwell, who led a gallant and purposeful life in the service of his army. Much of this contrast rests in the fact that Civil War veterans had been highly revered in American culture a half century before World War I and later World War II. Although veterans from World War II have been more celebrated than veterans from the First World War, neither of them have been as mythologized as much as the Civil War veterans from both sides of the conflict. | ||
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<blockquote>Sir (he gets permission to speak), is it fair to say that Lee was the better general than Grant? I know that their tactics don’t compare, but Grant had the knowledge of strategy. What good are tactics, sir, if the . . . larger mechanics of men and supplies are not developed properly, because the tactics are just the part of the whole? In this conception wasn’t Grant the greatest man because he tried to take into account the intangibles. He wasn’t much good at the buck-and-wing but he could think up the rest of the show. (The classroom roars.) | <blockquote>Sir (he gets permission to speak), is it fair to say that Lee was the better general than Grant? I know that their tactics don’t compare, but Grant had the knowledge of strategy. What good are tactics, sir, if the . . . larger mechanics of men and supplies are not developed properly, because the tactics are just the part of the whole? In this conception wasn’t Grant the greatest man because he tried to take into account the intangibles. He wasn’t much good at the buck-and-wing but he could think up the rest of the show. (The classroom roars.) | ||
It has been a triple error. He has been contradictory, rebellious and facetious. | It has been a triple error. He has been contradictory, rebellious and facetious.{{sfn|Mailer|1948|p=411-2}} | ||
</blockquote> | </blockquote> | ||
Interestingly, everyone, including the narrator, thinks Cummings has made an error here, and he probably has in the eyes of these mere mortals, but actually, Cummings,who plays by the rules of the classical gods, has not.Cummings views war, almost literally, in fact, much like Dick Diver expressed in Fitzgerald’s ''Tender Is the Night'', as a “love battle” | Interestingly, everyone, including the narrator, thinks Cummings has made an error here, and he probably has in the eyes of these mere mortals, but actually, Cummings,who plays by the rules of the classical gods, has not.Cummings views war, almost literally, in fact, much like Dick Diver expressed in Fitzgerald’s ''Tender Is the Night'', as a “love battle”. According to this thinking, all war was a battle fought between two men who were in love with themselves and what they do. To General Cummings, war or any visceral contest was always psychosexual. Underscoring this point is the very idealistic Lieutenant Hearns’ discovery that Cummings is making battlefield decisions based almost directly on his rhetorical interactions with him—in reaction, actually, to Cummings’s repressed homosexual desire for his lieutenant aide-de-camp. He is a man indeed who enjoys verbal combat. When he discovers this secret psychosexual truth, Hearns leaves his safe staff job for one directly on the front for which he is subsequently killed. For the general’s part, his actions come from a combination of submerged homosexual desire and the sociopathic need to fulfill every impulse, even if they follow a complicated sublimation pattern and even if they cause serious causality rates. No matter the need or method, Hearn nevertheless uncovered a painful metaphysical lesson about warfare (at least according to Mailer’s view of life): Every army needs a controlled killer in charge of its army, but with the advent of modern technological weapons, the tragic and traumatic consequences of these men are not only enormous but long lasting as well. | ||
{{pg|85|86}} | {{pg|85|86}} | ||
In their own unique way, the object of Cummings’ verbal sparring, fellow West Pointers Lee and Grant, could also be seen as sociopathic killers on a large scale, despite Lee’s and Grant’s somewhat hagiological status.Although they are typically used as foils to each other, Lee and Grant are more accurately understood as two different faces on the same coin. Grant is the military organizational genius who understood the primary principle of military mathematics. He had twice as many men and ten times the resources as the enemy, and he knew how best to employ that math. Grant used blunt force trauma not only to pound the enemy into submission, to compound his mathematical advantage, but also to pound his own army into being a sharp fighting force. But Grant also needed to lose control of himself with alcohol and tobacco on occasion to function psychologically in the places that his genius took him. On the other side of the coin, Lee is the courtly and courteous well-bred Southerner, undermanned and eventually out-resourced. He was typically so controlled in what he did that he could tune out even the most disconcerting and devastating violence around him. Yet on one occasion, during the 1864 Battle of the Spotsylvania, he snapped, losing control of himself so profoundly that his soldiers had to grab his reins and shout “Lee to the rear” to keep him from charging headlong into a murderous pitched battle | In their own unique way, the object of Cummings’ verbal sparring, fellow West Pointers Lee and Grant, could also be seen as sociopathic killers on a large scale, despite Lee’s and Grant’s somewhat hagiological status.Although they are typically used as foils to each other, Lee and Grant are more accurately understood as two different faces on the same coin. Grant is the military organizational genius who understood the primary principle of military mathematics. He had twice as many men and ten times the resources as the enemy, and he knew how best to employ that math. Grant used blunt force trauma not only to pound the enemy into submission, to compound his mathematical advantage, but also to pound his own army into being a sharp fighting force. But Grant also needed to lose control of himself with alcohol and tobacco on occasion to function psychologically in the places that his genius took him. On the other side of the coin, Lee is the courtly and courteous well-bred Southerner, undermanned and eventually out-resourced. He was typically so controlled in what he did that he could tune out even the most disconcerting and devastating violence around him. Yet on one occasion, during the 1864 Battle of the Spotsylvania, he snapped, losing control of himself so profoundly that his soldiers had to grab his reins and shout “Lee to the rear” to keep him from charging headlong into a murderous pitched battle.{{sfn|United States. National Park Service.|1999|p=54-55}} This tangible anger, from a man who was archetypically well-mannered, originated from his profound love for his fellow Southerners. His anger was nurtured by his realization that he was compelled to sacrifice his life and theirs for ''the mythological Cause''. The deepest depths of this anger, however, can be framed by the first premise of Lee’s warrior syllogism, his thesis, which was always to be the consummate aggressor in battle. Until the advent of Grant, who sacrificed his men for a modern government that had all the mathematical advantages, Lee had had no binary counterpart. Until that historical moment, Lee had been aggressive and victorious, and the large-scale sacrifices had been psychologically manageable. | ||
During the spring and summer of 1864, Lee met not so much his match but his more dominant syllogistic twin, the other face of a catastrophic coin. In that moment, Lee knew what the ultimate conclusion had to be—the coin would flip. Grant’s entry into the equation meant the end of the war and the fighting and the end of doing what Lee had always been called to do: attack. Remember: Lee was the man who said that is was a good thing war was so horrible because we would love it too much if it weren’t | During the spring and summer of 1864, Lee met not so much his match but his more dominant syllogistic twin, the other face of a catastrophic coin. In that moment, Lee knew what the ultimate conclusion had to be—the coin would flip. Grant’s entry into the equation meant the end of the war and the fighting and the end of doing what Lee had always been called to do: attack. Remember: Lee was the man who said that is was a good thing war was so horrible because we would love it too much if it weren’t.{{sfn|United States. National Park Service.|1999|p=34}} | ||
{{pg|86|87}} | {{pg|86|87}} | ||
At the May,1864, Battle of Spotsylvania, both sides of the Hegelian coin were cast. For Lee, the war had become too horrible, and the end was finally in sight. However, what truly altered Lee was the fact that he was, for the first time in his life, no longer the assertive thesis, the archetypal aggressor, the man constantly on the offense, in charge of himself and fate. With Grant, Lee had suddenly become the archetypical submissive antithesis; in effect, he had become emasculated but not unmanned. To be more precise, the mythological Lee was outmanned and out supplied and tragically, mathematically disadvantaged.Although Lee was bested, he did remain intact in the process, not diminished as much as altered. It does not take much knowledge of Freudian psychoanalytic theory to speculate what kind of dreams Lee was having at the time, and his biographer does state that he had begun having troubled sleep as well as physical deterioration, which was new for him. | At the May,1864, Battle of Spotsylvania, both sides of the Hegelian coin were cast. For Lee, the war had become too horrible, and the end was finally in sight. However, what truly altered Lee was the fact that he was, for the first time in his life, no longer the assertive thesis, the archetypal aggressor, the man constantly on the offense, in charge of himself and fate. With Grant, Lee had suddenly become the archetypical submissive antithesis; in effect, he had become emasculated but not unmanned. To be more precise, the mythological Lee was outmanned and out supplied and tragically, mathematically disadvantaged.Although Lee was bested, he did remain intact in the process, not diminished as much as altered. It does not take much knowledge of Freudian psychoanalytic theory to speculate what kind of dreams Lee was having at the time, and his biographer does state that he had begun having troubled sleep as well as physical deterioration, which was new for him. | ||