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In the novels I have examined in this dissertation, the myths of war and the idealized images of the American soldier provide a disservice to civilian and soldier alike. As the soldier

characters consume various forms of media depicting previous wars, they internalize those images and envision the soldier they want to be. The issue with these representations is that they do not address current wars and current cultural norms, but instead perpetuate mythic caricatures of John Wayne bravery and Rambo-like victories. These images may provide a false sense of relief at the beginning of one’s deployment, because the individual believes they have a sense of what to expect; but that relief quickly turns to anxiety upon the realization that the expectations do not match actual experience. The postmodern war narrative underscores that this process can be even more psychologically and socially damaging to soldiers than going to war without any preconceived notions.

These six war narratives show characters that attempt to sidestep the trauma of their newfound mental unpreparedness by adopting specific coping mechanisms that have been unconsciously created by representations of previous wars. Though the attempts to create spaces of agency and control within the chaos appear successful, this is just a temporary solution to an ongoing problem. Yossarian and Billy Pilgrim may have disrupted the binary thinking of their peers through the slipperiness of language and disregard for linear time, but in the end this did not “solve” their problems. Yossarian goes AWOL, and as we find out later, in Heller’s sequel to

Catch-22, Closing Time (1994), he does not continue to challenge those in charge, but instead assimilates and works for a defense contracting firm led by the billionaire Milo Mindbender from his squadron in World War II. At the start of the novel he is in the hospital again, pretending something is wrong with him, exactly where Catch-22 begins. The older Yossarian appears to

have become the type of person he wished to avoid in his youth, and he is literally in the same situation as he was decades earlier, illustrating that his character has not evolved, even though at the end of Catch-22 it seems he has learned something from his deployment. Similarly Billy Pilgrim’s ending is not inspiring either as he is assassinated by Paul Lazzaro. Despite his disregard for masculine performance and his lack of survival instincts, he survives the war in order for it to continually haunt him and eventually kill him. Decades after the war these two characters that appeared extremely subversive while in-country, never really gain control over their lives once the war is over; it still controls them and their fates.

The Vietnam fictions illuminate how the coping strategy of creating fantasy missions does not really provide the agency and satisfaction that Paul Berlin and Skip Sands hope for. Paul Berlin escapes through his quest to find Cacciato, but his quest ends with a realization that his unconscious tried very hard to bury. Throughout the “Road to Paris” chapters Berlin controls his environment, the characters, and everyone’s thoughts; but when the memory of what really happened to Cacciato emerges, Berlin finds himself even more traumatized than when the event originally took place. In Tree of Smoke Skip Sands’ fantasy also traumatizes him. His life ends in a Kuala Lumpur jail where he is sentenced to death for gun running. Instead of participating in an important component of the war and working his way up the CIA ranks, Skip’s life devolves into a criminal conspiracy that leads to a death sentence.

The characters in second Iraq War novels do not necessarily attempt to control their environment in-country, but instead work to control civilian perceptions. Due to the public reception of some Vietnam veterans, military officials in the Middle East are acutely aware of how a negative image can affect American civilian support. This awareness leads those officers in public relations to very carefully frame each story about Iraq. Instead of reporting the facts,

they manipulate and omit different pieces of information in order to ensure positive spin on events that could invite comparisons to the Vietnam War. The characters in Fobbit that work in the PAO, such as Gooding and Harkleroad, are in charge of reworking press releases to maintain civilian support. The fear of being compared to Vietnam drives them, and even when Abe Shrinkle continually makes one mistake after another, they attempt to clean up the mess. This framing and storytelling pushes Gooding too far in the end, and he, like Yossarian, goes off into the unknown at the end of the novel, unable to cope. Harkleroad goes one step too far and presumably takes his lies to the next level, which could potentially end his career. Though framing one’s experiences has the potential to create a sense of agency at war, these two

characters do not gain anything positive from this strategy. Gooding realizes how desensitized he has become to death and destruction, and Harkleroad, under so much pressure continually

throughout the text, takes his lies further and further until we can assume that it ruins his career. Their coping mechanisms as individuals in the military provides a false sense of control because it is centered around avoiding comparisons to Vietnam. I would argue this is the most damaging of the three coping mechanisms because it harms both soldiers and civilians, denying agency and understanding to both groups.

We see the damage that emerges from framing in Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, in which Fountain writes about the Bravo Squad’s Thanksgiving celebration with the Dallas Cowboys. Due to the military’s manipulation of information and the way in which stories from Iraq are framed by the media, the regular civilian assumes a different Iraq War experience than the soldier’s actually reality. The civilian/soldier relationship then turns into conversations of appreciation for sacrificing so much, because civilians know they need to portray a supportive American in comparison to the American in the 1970s. The soldier then must not only deal with

a barrage of civilians spouting buzz words about the war in Iraq, as we see happen repeatedly to Bravo Squad, but they also must silently work through the trauma that they have encountered in- country. Upon returning to civilian life, soldiers are expected to be happy and proud because that is the message the media disseminates, but in reality this is a war and people are dying. There is a disconnect, which Billy Lynn only gets a short glimpse of during the Victory Tour, but which he now knows will define his future.

The coping mechanisms that each character uses are attempts to assert agency and control over one of the most chaotic experiences a human can endure. The myths from prior depictions of war cause soldiers to prepare for the past and not their present. Even the way in which the characters cope with the disconnect between past and present is, as I have argued, a product of the myths circulated about previous wars, so when it appears they have an opportunity to take control over their situation, they are still being manipulated by the past. Perhaps the motivation underlying the efforts of veteran authors like Vonnegut, Heller, and O’Brien is to help the reader to recognize the inherently problematic nature of representing war to those who have not

experienced it directly yet still feel they have some understanding based on popular myth and narrative. By foregrounding the stifling constraints of the gender binary, the need to resort to fantasy missions and imaginary quests, and the damaging impact of framing the war on

military/civilian relations, these authors emphasize the need, through their fictions, for civilians to start to support the soldiers through political engagement and careful consideration of the stories that circulate about military conflict, its purpose, and its effects.

Each soldier is affected by the myths of what they “should” be, and this concept is as old as war itself. Images of the ideal soldier can be traced to the beginning of civilization; the Egyptians did not draw pictures of soldiers fleeing battle but fighting to the death rather than

accepting defeat. Each generation hears and internalizes such stories—a fact that has not and may never change. What has changed in the postmodern era is that war literature has

increasingly included signs that the idealized soldier—stoic, courageous, and admirable—is a myth that actually haunts the actual soldier, rendering him or her even more at odds with the reality of conflict and its traumatic effects. Throughout the novels I have discussed, those that perform according to the myth of the ideal soldier suffer and are often despised or killed. Even those who recognize the falsehood of these mythic images and struggle to rework them into a new way to approach the war tend to fail. Perhaps the purpose of the postmodern war narrative is to advance a third approach, which is to recognize that the myth itself is harmful in all its forms and must be examined, challenged, and eventually dismantled.