The Reaction Paper

This is my reaction paper.

Richard McLean
21st Century Literature
Professor Lennon
December 3, 2008
Reaction Paper

Shooting War

The first book that I will talk about is Shooting War. This graphic novel has many themes involved within its pages but I will focus on its war message and religious theme. This novel portrays war in a horrible light from the side of the Americans during a conflict in the Middle East. The Americans are portrayed as the bullies of war and the terrorist more as freedom fighters with the goal of liberating the Middle East from the tyrannical ways of the capitalist West. The Americans are portrayed almost as religious crusaders in this book. The American soldiers have crosses across their helmets and on other parts of their uniform and this has an uncanny link to the crusades. They even show the terrorist leader as if he may be Jesus or going through stigmata.
The section that I will focus on is the part towards the end when the American soldiers track down the terrorist hideout by using Jimmy Burns and a tracer. They bust through a hole in the ceiling and come flying in shooting as the terrorist is getting ready to broadcast and one of the soldiers shoots him through the middle of his hand. They definitely did not have to make a big deal about him being shot but instead there is a close up picture of the hole through his hand and the painful look on his face as if being tortured. This is definitely a reference to stigmata. This is showing him as Jesus being nailed to the cross and persecuted by the Romans, in his case the Americans, and being pursued straight to the end and killed for his belief system and values that he would remain unchanged on. This is the perfect scene leading up to the death of the terrorist who was made out to be a martyr in his tank. It was the terrorist versus the entire American army and he went out literally in a blaze of glory.
The Mercy Seat
The Mercy Seat is a play based around September 11. The central theme of the play was a tragedy being used for personal gain. Ben in the play is having an affair with his boss and they have been talking about running away with each other for some time now and then he sees an opportunity when the terrorist attacks happen on that day in September. This is not an everyday idea that would cross the minds of most people but he wants to use this incident in order to disappear with his lover, Abby and have an easy out with his family. This whole plan reeks of pitiful human being and would never work to begin with. The ironic thing is that the whole time Ben has wanted to do the right thing but this tragedy gave him one last shot at something with Abby.
The scene that shows this best is when he is describing his tombstone. Here lies Ben: He was okay. The thought that crosses his mind is that he is not a great person but he is just average, no worse or better than the person next to him. I thought the idea that he was coming up with this plan and he obviously has been full of himself throughout the entire play was almost genius. No one would ever think of himself or herself as being okay in death. This shows that he understands completely what he was trying to do and he was not a great person or an evil person but just someone trying to benefit from a tragedy. The entire premise of the play is just okay to begin with too because who would actually think they could enjoy a play about September 11 or the terrorist attacks. Ben actually wants to fix his mistake with his wife because he was going to call Abby at the beginning of the play and end the affair. Now in saying that, the tragedy actually gave him a reason not to make that call because there was a glimmer of hope for him to run and be forgotten just like his tombstone.
Jarhead
I believe that Jarhead’s central theme is one of showing us the war from both sides of the table. You have the Americans on one side and the Iraqis on the other. This book shows in multiple examples of the blurring of these lines of the good guys and the bad guys. It just goes to show that the people fighting on the enemy’s side are just like us. They think the same exact things and we just take it for granted because they are just like one of our soldiers serving their country and vowing to die for something they believe in. This goes to show that this book is an excellent example of a soldier having complete respect for the work he has done for the country he is serving. He has to undoubtedly have that same respect for the soldier on the other side but it still always comes down to them or us.
The scene I will use is when Swofford and his team bomb the small base with a couple of Iraqi soldiers guarding it. Now after the bomb hits and the soldiers go into investigate the damage and they find the men ripped to pieces and cut clean in half, Swofford starts to think about if these men had children and what they were thinking about before the bomb hit. This is almost showing Swofford identifying with the enemy and I think almost feeling bad for them. This is all happening while the other men are going through their wallets and pockets. I think Swofford was having a, what if this were me, moment when he walked into the camp and saw these bodies but on the other hand he was still glad that it was not him and he never wanted it to be him. I believe that this scene accurately shows the two sides of war and that they are blurred almost into a football game with the one team’s fans sitting behind them, cheering them on and vise versa. But in actually both teams are putting their lives on the line for the fans not letting the other team near them.
The Pillowman
The Pillowman is a very interesting play because it deals with death in a weird, uncommon way. It deals with torture as a central theme and you see many different examples of this throughout the book but I think that in every story there is a different meaning to the torture or effect of the torture. This is dealt with in a very weird way as well because they new that Katurian was an innocent man so to speak but still drove him to the point to kill and torture his brother. And then they execute him for crimes that he didn’t commit but they got their man. The different stories throughout the book all deal with torture in different ways. The razor blades in the apples when the little girl swallows them is just torture for the sake of torture and killing her. The story of the man who cuts off the little boy’s toes is torturing him for the sake of saving him at a later date when he knew the rest of the children would be taken away. This in turn was torture for the sake of saving a life. Then Katurian, kills his brother in order to save him from torture by the police force even though he actually tortured his brother by asphyxiation. The Gibbet story shows a bit of psychological torture in that the man who was shot by the highwaymen didn’t know why he was being kept captive or being shot. This may have been the hardest type of torture seeing as the man did not know why he was being held captive or if he would be going to hell. The whole story is based on torture but it was very interesting that the torture would be used to relieve future pain. The Pillowman story is exactly this, he took people who were tortured and he was making them end their own life in order to prevent future torture but then he ends up taking his own life as a child and he is unable to end everyone’s suffering. This is a very interesting spin on a torture story. Its almost like he wanted to show that torture can be used for good.