A Fable

“The faces of four mountain men in a country which had no mountains, of peasants in a land which no longer had a peasantry; alien even among the other nine among whom they were chained and shackled.”

Among the 13 men who inspire the sudden false armistice, the diverse backgrounds of the “four mountain men” (16) suggests a broader humanity to the quest for peace. Notions of War and Peace are not limited to France or Western Europe but are fundamental to the entire human condition.

“A slight woman, not much more than a girl, who had been pretty once, and could be again, with sleep and something to eat and a little warm water and soap and a comb.”

The difference between a desperate, struggling person and a pretty person is reduced to the bare essentials of life. Food, sleep, water, and personal hygiene separate a struggling person from someone beautiful, but this is exactly what the war has taken away. Civilians have been separated from the necessities of life, denied the ability to life in anything other than desperation.

“Thinking how war and drink are the two things man is never too poor to buy.”

War and alcohol are tied together throughout the novel. Many soldiers drink to forget, as a way of navigating the inevitable trauma that they have built up. In peace time, the soldiers searching for the corporal’s body are too poor for both “war and drink” (24), functioning as an ironic demonstration of why war will inevitably return.

“The boche doesn’t want to destroy us, any more than we would want, could afford, to destroy him. Can’t you understand: either of us, without the other, couldn’t exist?”

The two sides of the war are not combatants in the traditional sense. They are both captured by the reality of war, in that they are compelled to act out the violent expectations of their commanders as a grand theatrical tribute to the abstract idea of war as a glorious venture. Neither side can truly win; the only winner is war itself, and those who are invested in it as something to revere.

“Hate Germans, if you must hate someone.”

In the dying days of the war, the officers struggle to motivate their men. A desperate, half-hearted captain’s plea plays on the nationalist motivations for the war that has killed millions of soldiers and civilians. Hate is perpetual, the command implies, so it must be directed somewhere.

“Or perhaps not even moving air but just air, spreading by attrition from invisible and weightless molecule to molecule as disease, smallpox spreads, or fear, or hope.”

The officers fear the corporal’s message because it is radical. This radical message is so appealing to the enlisted men that it spreads like a contagion through the trenches, a virus which compels the lowest ranking men to ask whether they should simply refuse to fight. To the officers, men invested entirely in the glorious idea of war, this virus is an existential threat to their status. It must be contained.

“The announcement! To let the whole world know that He has risen!”

Among the men fighting in the war, Christianity and an awareness of the history of Jesus Christ is prevalent. Despite this, very few characters explicitly acknowledge the analogous nature of the corporal’s existence. In this sense, the analogy functions only on a textual level and it is not acknowledged by the characters themselves, who are aware of the passion of the Christ but cannot read it into the situation as it unfolds. The war has confounded their ability to see what is in front of them.

“But it was a French truce; it wasn’t ours.”

To the military men, a truce can be possessed and owned. As such, it does not just mean peace, but peace along a certain nationalistic valence. A French truth is unpalatable to Germans, British, and American soldiers, as it is an inherently French interpretation of peace or the cessation of fighting. As such, no truce can be tolerated because it cannot be separated from nationalist ideas. Until the characters can relinquish the idea about possessing a truce, a truce cannot (and will not) be achieved.

“Peace abolished it, and that man who would choose between glory and peace had best let his voice be small indeed.”

The choice is presented not in terms of War and Peace, but in terms of glory and peace. The officers are deluded, framing glory as a synonym of peace as—to them, in their offices rather than the trenches—glory is the natural product of war. They crave glory, so they must have war. Since they crave glory, they abhor peace unless it is achieved through glorious, warlike means.

“Then nothing to do forever more but work all day and sit in pubs in the evenings and then go home and sleep in a clean bed with your wife.”

Levine views War and Peace like the officers, as a means of self-glorification. As such, the notion of an idyllic life—relaxing at home in a clean bed with a romantic partner—is presented as a detestable “nothing” (116) for Levine. The glory of war is seen as the only true alternative to the loathsome mundanity of a peaceful life.

“It had gone on too long to cease, finish, over night, at a moment’s notice, like this.”

The manner in which the war ends is just as important as the manner in which the war is fought. Much has been ventured, with so many lives have been lost, that the war cannot simply end because the lowest ranked men refuse to fight. To the officers in charge, this is an offensive idea. They demand a performative end to the war, an affirmation of their status and importance that comes from the top down rather than the bottom up.

“In fact, only one of the four—the corporal—could even speak French.”

The corporal’s background is kept vague, partially Balkan and Middle Eastern, having travelled throughout Europe and Asia. Among his followers, however, are native French speaks and people who cannot understand French. This mix suggests that his message has a cross-cultural, multiethnic appeal. He is not just speaking to one audience, but to many, and his words are powerful enough to transcend linguistic, ethnic, and national borders, even though the war is being fought in the name of such causes.

“They who by avocation and affinity had been called and as by bishops selected and trained and dedicated into the immutable hierarchy of War to be major-domos to such as this, to preside with all the impunity and authority of civilized usage over the formal orderly shooting of one set of men by another wearing the same uniform.”

The officers are chasing glory and victory, just as humanity has done for millennia. This irony of a civilized war is also one in which the armies appoint certain soldiers to oversee the execution of their fellow men, however, while still being coated in the blood and filth of the trenches. The officers are besotted with an idea of war which bears no resemblance to reality.

“There was another one last year, called the Somme; they give ribbons now not for being brave because all men are brave if you just frighten them enough.”

Given the sheer volume of death in places like the Somme, a small ribbon is a meagre reward for the death, violence, and trauma to which the men are subjected. Medals have transformed in the minds of the men, from a trophy won for bravery to an absurd embodiment of the callousness of the officer class who are willing to frighten and murder them in exchange for little pieces of ribbon.

“Maybe what I need is to have to meet somebody. To believe. Not in anything: just to believe.”

The war has been so brutal that it has robbed people of their belief. They are not just irreligious; their capacity to believe has been shattered, as they cannot comprehend how the violence that they have witnessed can coexist with any sort of religious belief. They want to live in a world where they can believe but they must contend with their own reality. The corporal has the power to alter that reality and to restore belief.

“Shoot them.”

Gragnon demands that 3,000 of his own men be shot for the crime of not wanting to fight. Their lives are a sacrifice he is willing to make in the name of preserving the power dynamic between the men and the officers, ensuring that the long-held beliefs about war, glory, and the military remain in place.

“Does she come here to protest a miracle, or merely affirm one?”

The arrival of the women before the marshal is one of the few times in the novel when a feminine presence is permitted to confront a person in a position of actual power. His patronizing question belies the reality of Marthe’s visit, which reveals how much she knows about the marshal’s life. He is at a disadvantage but he cannot bring himself to acknowledge it.

“Alliances. That is what is wrong each time.”

The German general views himself as being an enemy of the other generals in the room, but they are allied in their determination to resume the war. They form an alliance based on their rank and power, all while refusing to acknowledge that their war is actually a Class War. That they cannot discern the true nature of their alliances shows how deluded they have become.

“We, you and I and our whole unregenerate and unregenerable kind; not only you and I and our tight close jealous unchallengeable hierarchy behind this wire and our opposite German one behind that one.”

The Quartermaster General is one of the only high-ranking members of the military who explicitly acknowledges the Class War theme of the novel. He outlines the solidarity between the officer class and the way in which it has come to dominate the typical arrangement of the battle. The idea of the war is more important to the officers than actually winning the war, so as to maintain the hierarchy.

“You’ll get what’s coming to you, no bloody fear.”

Polchek plays the role of Judas Iscariot, the disciple who betrayed Jesus and later hanged himself. In this telling of the passion of Christ, Polchek will be executed as his ‘reward’ for his betrayal. His existence is as intolerable to the high command as the rest of the regiment.

“In the army zone. Worse. In the battle zone. With Germans on one side of it and Americans on the other.”

The corporal’s family intends to bury him between the battle lines. By burying him in no-man’s land, they enact a symbolic demonstration of the corporal being free from nationalistic and militaristic traditions. He does not belong to either side, as his message of peace is universal.

“The now silent line of the old stubborn four-year salient—so that now they were seeing war or what six days ago had been war.”

The brief armistice allows the civilian survivors to recalculate their understanding of the world. The physical geography of France has changed, with the artillery craters and dead bodies creating a new psychic space in which the trauma of war is made real. The guns may have stopped briefly but the countryside and the psyches of everyone involved are forever altered.

“Their leaders, ignorant too, could have explained some of it, a little of it to them in their own tongue.”

The leaders could not explain the reason for the war to the men because—if they were honest—then they would reveal the callousness of the Class War. The “tongue” which they cannot speak to the enlisted men is not French, English, or German, but class-based politics which accurately describes why the war was fought in such a fashion. They cannot speak this language because to give it voice would be to condemn themselves.