Soldier’s Heart: Reading Literature Through Peace and War at West Point (review)

What does it mean to be a civilian teacher at a military institution? What is the value of a liberal education in a time of war? Of what use is poetry to soldiers? These are some of the questions that Samet (B.A. Harvard 1991, Ph.D. Yale 1997) addresses in her book. Part memoir, part analysis, part autobiography, Soldier’s Heart pivots on the fulcrum of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, which divide the “before” and “after” of her professional life at the U.S. Military Academy. Ultimately, they also confirmed her belief in literature as a necessary—and pleasurable—confrontation with morality, ambiguity, and the complexities of interpretation for young officers-in-training during the Long War.

Soldier’s Heart is loosely divided into a prologue, seven chapters, and an epilogue. One of the most sharply focused is chapter two, “Books Are Weapons,” which interweaves history and literature: the history of literary studies at West Point, ancient and modern military leaders as readers, the military as a disseminator of books from World War II to the present, former students’ reflections on how literature helps them to give meaning to their lives and duties in Afghanistan and Iraq. Similarly well-focused are chapter four, “To Obey or Not to Obey,” which draws on materials as diverse as Ambrose Bierce’s Civil War stories and “the ironic potential of hooah” (p. 140) to explicate both the value and the limitations of obedience, and chapter five, “Bibles, Lots of Bibles,” which critiques the contradictory roles of religion at West Point. Others, such as chapter three, “Becoming Penelope, the Only Woman in the Room,” in which Samet seems finally not to know what to do with her topic or even whether she cares about it, do not hold together.

Ultimately, however, Samet’s book is more woven than built. Favorite movies and key texts such as Grant’s Memoirs, Tolstoy’s War and Peace, and Randall Jarrell’s “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” come into play in several chapters. Vignettes of Samet’s students and military colleagues gradually create a portrait of the institution. The movement from chapter to chapter exhibits Samet’s increasing attachment to her surroundings—though she concludes that a civilian is ultimately an outsider at West Point. The book’s mix of materials is well-served by Samet’s style, which is lively, precise but not pedantic, and often slyly humorous. Though more successful as anecdote and analysis than as self-reflection, the autobiographical elements of Soldier’s Heart help broaden its audience.

Better developed than Bruce Fleming’s Annapolis Autumn: Life, Death, and Literature at the U.S. Naval Academy (2006) and more analytical than David Lipsky’s Absolutely American: Four Years at West Point (2003), the strength of Samet’s book lies in its thoughtful examination of both conflicts and parallels between categories often seen in opposition: military and civilian, action and reflection, peace and war. It is good reading for those who teach in military institutions, those who are curious about them, and anyone alert to the necessity of improved understanding between soldiers and civilians after 9/11.