User:Chelsey.brantley/sandbox: Difference between revisions

Line 120:

grace."{{sfn|Mailer|1988|p=88}} Mailer recasts draft dodgers as draft resisters, those willing to risk their lives for peace rather than war. Furthermore, Mailer aligns the march itself with America’s long tradition of ostensibly just and triumphant empire-building conflict. He describes the March on the Pentagon as a rite of passage and connects this to a collection of American moments that could be understood as similar rites of passage, for “each generation

of Americans had forged their own rite, in the forest of the Alleghenies and the Adirondacks, at Valley Forge, at New Orleans in 1812, with Rogers and Clark or at Sutter’s Mill, at Gettysburg, the Alamo, the Klondike, the Argonne, Normandy, Pusan."{{sfn|Mailer|1988|p=308}} Such a comparison implies that without undergoing such crises the U.S. would not have become a sovereign republic, and so the March on the Pentagon is figured as another historic challenge for the country. This lofty rhetoric is meant to stir a reader’s patriotic sympathies, and Mailer is determined that his audience will see the marchers not as subversives but as patriots within the traditions of American democracy.

Mailer understood that “to affect consciousness is thus to shape power” and that his words were shaping people’s perception of the anti-war movement.

Even if his readers were persuaded to believe in a peaceful resolution to the Vietnam War, what would these readers do with this new consciousness,

a consciousness which was “itself a central ingredient in power”{{sfn|Miller|year|p=394}}? It is difficult to measure how readers enact their power, but we can watch how Mailer enacts his own. He undertakes his own civil disobedience, getting arrested in hopes of gaining publicity and offering credence to the

cause of the march, and he understands that his symbolic action must be captured by the press to multiply its effect. When writing the story of ''Armies'',

Mailer tracks his own movement from critic to supporter to war protester to{{pg|488|489}}

prisoner of conscience, and we see that he “feels the claims of imagination

as urgently as the claims of action,"{{sfn|Behar|1970|p=262}} and so he must both examine and act.

''Armies'' represents, for Mailer, a test of his moral strength, an examination of whether Mailer could stand behind his highest moral principles. The story of ''Armies'' offers a way for Mailer to put his philosophy into action and to answer the question, Are you willing to put your life on the line? David Wyatt calls Mailer “a man so obsessed by courage,” which is a persistent theme in Mailer’s famous essay “The White Negro” (1957).{{sfn|Wyatt|2008|p=318}} In many ways ''Armies'' is tied to all of Mailer’s preceding writing. The most obvious connection is to ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' (1967), but the themes and challenges of ''Armies'' are also indebted to ''Cannibals and Christians'' (1966) and ''The Presidential Papers'' (1963). These books variously tested the warrior in Mailer. Even his first book, ''The Naked and the Dead'' (1948), plays a role in the conception of ''Armies''. Mary Dearborn claims that ''Armies'' is a recapitulation of his first novel bringing up questions of “confrontation with and the reaction to authority."{{sfn|Dearborn|1999|p=244}} In ''Armies'', Mailer’s critique of structures of power and his own civil disobedience stands in clear defiance of authoritarian establishments, the same authoritarian establishments which thwarted characters in his previous texts. Mailer’s working out of his own demons in this

journey from author to activist was also meant to engage the hearts and minds of his readers in the important business of opening their eyes to the truth about the war in Vietnam. But it is not just a story about Mailer or the many Mailer characters; Mailer serves as an entry to the predicament of the war in Vietnam and a people’s various ways to protest it.

===Citations===

@@ Line 120: / Line 120: @@
 grace."{{sfn|Mailer|1988|p=88}} Mailer recasts draft dodgers as draft resisters, those willing to risk their lives for peace rather than war. Furthermore, Mailer aligns the march itself with America’s long tradition of ostensibly just and triumphant empire-building conflict. He describes the March on the Pentagon as a rite of passage and connects this to a collection of American moments that could be understood as similar rites of passage, for “each generation
 of Americans had forged their own rite, in the forest of the Alleghenies and the Adirondacks, at Valley Forge, at New Orleans in 1812, with Rogers and Clark or at Sutter’s Mill, at Gettysburg, the Alamo, the Klondike, the Argonne, Normandy, Pusan."{{sfn|Mailer|1988|p=308}} Such a comparison implies that without undergoing such crises the U.S. would not have become a sovereign republic, and so the March on the Pentagon is figured as another historic challenge for the country. This lofty rhetoric is meant to stir a reader’s patriotic sympathies, and Mailer is determined that his audience will see the marchers not as subversives but as patriots within the traditions of American democracy.
+Mailer understood that “to affect consciousness is thus to shape power” and that his words were shaping people’s perception of the anti-war movement.
+Even if his readers were persuaded to believe in a peaceful resolution to the Vietnam War, what would these readers do with this new consciousness,
+a consciousness which was “itself a central ingredient in power”{{sfn|Miller|year|p=394}}? It is difficult to measure how readers enact their power, but we can watch how Mailer enacts his own. He undertakes his own civil disobedience, getting arrested in hopes of gaining publicity and offering credence to the
+cause of the march, and he understands that his symbolic action must be captured by the press to multiply its effect. When writing the story of ''Armies'',
+Mailer tracks his own movement from critic to supporter to war protester to{{pg|488|489}}
+prisoner of conscience, and we see that he “feels the claims of imagination
+as urgently as the claims of action,"{{sfn|Behar|1970|p=262}} and so he must both examine and act.
+''Armies'' represents, for Mailer, a test of his moral strength, an examination of whether Mailer could stand behind his highest moral principles. The story of ''Armies'' offers a way for Mailer to put his philosophy into action and to answer the question, Are you willing to put your life on the line? David Wyatt calls Mailer “a man so obsessed by courage,” which is a persistent theme in Mailer’s famous essay “The White Negro” (1957).{{sfn|Wyatt|2008|p=318}} In many ways ''Armies'' is tied to all of Mailer’s preceding writing. The most obvious connection is to ''Why Are We in Vietnam?'' (1967), but the themes and challenges of ''Armies'' are also indebted to ''Cannibals and Christians'' (1966) and ''The Presidential Papers'' (1963). These books variously tested the warrior in Mailer. Even his first book, ''The Naked and the Dead'' (1948), plays a role in the conception of ''Armies''. Mary Dearborn claims that ''Armies'' is a recapitulation of his first novel bringing up questions of “confrontation with and the reaction to authority."{{sfn|Dearborn|1999|p=244}} In ''Armies'', Mailer’s critique of structures of power and his own civil disobedience stands in clear defiance of authoritarian establishments, the same authoritarian establishments which thwarted characters in his previous texts. Mailer’s working out of his own demons in this
+journey from author to activist was also meant to engage the hearts and minds of his readers in the important business of opening their eyes to the truth about the war in Vietnam. But it is not just a story about Mailer or the many Mailer characters; Mailer serves as an entry to the predicament of the war in Vietnam and a people’s various ways to protest it.
 ===Citations===