Child-Sized History: Fictions of the Past in U.S. Classrooms

3. War Novels

71 Chapter 3 War Novels ■ Ask Americans of any age to give a broad outline of U.S. history, and they will invariably start with Columbus, proceed to the Pilgrims, then mark the passage of time by a steady march of military engagements— the Revolution, the Civil War, and World Wars I and II—before adding the civil rights movement and returning to battles overseas.1 This narrative framework is rehearsed in the nation’s history textbooks and reinforced in popular media and museum exhibits. The progression fa­ cilitates a coherent, chronological narrative of the nation, but its confident shorthand also suggests inevitability and consensus, nation and citizenry as one. It is in part this conflation of people and country that makes war such an intriguing subject of study. Children’s authors have turned to military conflicts with frequency, sometimes to bolster the oft-repeated national themes of freedom, opportunity , and unity, but other times to raise questions about the character of the nation-state or the nature of war itself. Novelists’ assumptions about what children would experience should war arrive at their doorsteps have changed substantially over the past seventy years—most significantly after the Vietnam War and 9/11—and these beliefs have shaped their portrayals of historical warfare. Novelistic depictions of the Revolution , the Civil War, and World War II have grown progressively harsher, less heroic, and more violent. The result is that three distinct generations of children’s war fiction have emerged: that written between World War II and the Vietnam War (affected by the civil rights movement and rise of second-wave feminism), that written between the Vietnam War and 9/11, and that written after the start of the twenty-first century.2 All three generations of war novels view military conflict as constituting pivotal moments in the nation’s history, moments that must be grappled with to understand one’s identity as a citizen. By answering central questions differently, however, the novels offer distinct versions of the legacy forged by American warfare. The questions posed are complex and penetrate deep into personal and national self-understanding: 72  Child-Sized History When a nation is at arms, where do citizens’ responsibilities lie? Can patriotism and dissent coexist? How does the violence of war fit into the stories soldiers and politicians tell, at war’s end, about the morality of peace? Ultimately, can wars bring about positive good, or is the violence they engender inherently destructive for the nation and its people? Three Generations of Fighting for Independence: Johnny, Tim, and Octavian The first generation of children’s war novels still taught in today’s schools were published during the 1940s and 1950s and fit into the larger category of bildungsroman narratives. Set against iconic backdrops, they rest on the assumption that war tested America but ultimately strengthened both the nation and its people. Whether the narratives unfold during the Revolution or Civil War, they share a number of features in common, the most important of which is a protagonist who symbolically figures as the nation as a whole.3 In merging central character and country, first-­ generation war novels purport to tell not just a story about a particular war, but the story of the war—ultimately, a narrative of the nation , its people, and its destiny. The representative protagonist epitomizes the ideal of the self-made man; he is young, white, native born, English speaking, and northern. Hardworking and on the rise, he is either a farmer on his own land or an apprentice in a respectable trade. Given first-generation war novels’ regional bias, one might ask how they came to garner curricular popularity nationwide. Historian Joanne Pope Melish provides a partial explanation: in the years following the Civil War, southerners as well as northerners embraced the mythic idea that New England was the uncomplicated, historical center of a libertyloving people who shunned slavery.4 What facilitated the war novels’ nationwide acceptance, therefore, was their inattention to slavery and silence on the issue of racial equality. In the case of Civil War narratives , authors’ denial of slavery’s importance to the war and, especially, their romanticization of the Old South’s “contented slaves” led to books’ removal from school curricula during the post–civil rights era. But firstgeneration war novels about the Revolution continued to benefit from their silence on slavery; by eliminating discussion of African Americans’ uneven fate in the wake of war—as well as the rancorous sectional debate about...