-
Conclusion
- University of South Carolina Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
Conclusion At the start I alluded to the pervasive use of battle exhortation, in civilian as well as military life, and chose to focus on theory and practice within martial settings. Even in its primary context, the battlefield, however, the genre has not been a popular object of study. Morally, it can be regarded as suspect, this advocacy of fighting, this talk. Practically, it is sometimes deemed affected or impossible. So as the vehicle for reviewing my conclusions, let us observe battle exhortation from a nonmilitary context. Doing so offers perspective on these questions of morality and probability. It also provides, by analogy, a measure of validation to our military-context conclusions. Imagine being a fourteen-year-old Jewish boy in the spring of 1944 when, suddenly, you, your family, and your community are wrested from your homes, crowded into trains, and shipped to points unknown. Imagine, further , that upon your arrival at some prison facility you are deprived of your packed possessions, separated from your mother and young sister, stripped of your clothes, shorn of your hair, disinfected with gasoline and hot water, issued prison clothing, and marched from holding area to holding area. Sometime during those first hours you are informed,“Work or the crematory —the choice is in your hands,” and you witness babies being dumped alive into a burning pit. Your own fate seems to hinge on which line you are instructed to stand in. At midnight, your second or third evening in this terrifying place, you find yourself and others standing before yet another prison block. The prisoner in charge explains: Comrades, you’re in the concentration camp of Auschwitz. There’s a long road of suffering ahead of you. But don’t lose courage. You’ve already escaped the gravest danger: selection. So now, muster your strength, and don’t lose heart. We shall all see the day of liberation. Have faith in life. Above all else, have faith. Drive out despair, and you will keep death away from yourselves. Hell is not for eternity. And now, a prayer—or rather, a piece of advice: let there be comradeship among you. We are all brothers, and we are all suffering the same fate. The same smoke floats over all our heads. Help one another. It is the only way to survive. Enough said. You’re tired. Listen. You’re in Block 17. I am responsible for keeping order here. Conclusion 145 Anyone with a complaint against anyone else can come and see me. That’s all. You can go to bed. Two people to a bunk. Good night.1 This is an Elie Wiesel recollection from the murderous Nazi death camps in which his mother, sister, father, and millions of others would perish. He himself would be reduced to a living corpse there. And yet the speech above he remembers as “the first human words” during his ordeal. How does this text exemplify the issues discussed in this book? By this point the contours of battle exhortation are readily apparent.While the specific circumstances are different from military combat, the general situation is the same: a group of persons face grim circumstances; their plight is addressed by a formal or self-appointed leader, who addresses topics and manages tensions to counter group dissolution. Encouragement will flow in other directions (laterally, for instance, when Wiesel and his father urge one another on). Encouragement will be provided nonverbally (in the sharing of scarce soup or the sound of Allied bombs). But this text is symbolic action— the audible, verbal sort—intended to brace its audience for the psychological demands of significant challenge. The mention of danger (“a long road of suffering,” “selection”), a cause (seeing “the day of liberation”), and a commander (“responsible for keeping order”) reminds us of common topics recorded in chapters 1 and 2. If, wafting up from chronicles, such topics seem rehearsed, how could they be in this tortured nonmilitary context, where a Pole exhorts Jews within the confines of a Nazi death camp? And yet here such topics are, remembered by a participant . The centerpiece call for fraternity is both familiar and a little different from the call by Shakespeare’s Henry V or Plutarch’s Spartan mother. Here it has nothing to do with reputation. It is purely a matter of commiseration (“we are all suffering the same fate”) and survival (“the only way to survive”). In the military contexts there was, in addition to these...