ENGL 4310

“What were we? What are we? What will we be?” asks Alice McDermott in this snippet from NPR about “Pale Horse, Pale Rider.” What thought-provoking and yet frightening questions those are.

What were we?

In “Pale Horse, Pale Rider” the war is World War I. The “WAR to end WAR” is being fought “for Democracy, for humanity, a safe world forever and ever” (p.293). The enemy, the Germans, are called “Huns”, a name that obviously conjures up images of merciless killers sweeping through cities like the “martyred Belgium” and leaving them in ruins. Miranda wonders to herself, “Suppose I were not a coward, but said what I really thought? Suppose I said to hell with this filthy war?” (p.273) when she is being pressured to show “a pledge of good faith that she was a loyal American doing her duty” by buying a Liberty Bond. To think what she thinks is deemed “unpatriotic” but Miranda still wonders how many other people are silently opposed to the war like she is.

What are we?

Now, the war is the War in Iraq. Moreover, it is the Global War on Terror. It is being fought to bring Democracy, to liberate, to fight against “violent extremism,” and to defend U.S. citizens from terrorism. It being the “War on Terror” the enemies are called terrorists. As President Bush famously said, “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” Anyone who therefore opposes the war is considered by some to be in support of terrorism and not fulfilling the patriotic duty of a loyal American.

What will we be?

Every war has a title. Every war has the publicized, transient moral reason for why it is being fought. Every war has the enemy, the “Huns” and “terrorists.” And every war has the propaganda that makes people fear speaking out against it.

Take “Pale Horse, Pale Rider,” change a few names and dates. Change Germans to al-Qaeda. Change “martyred Belgium” to Iraq under Saddam Hussein’s rule. Change the Spanish Flu to AIDS or the Bird Flu. What do you have? It is amazing that Pale Horse, Pale Rider was published only two years after Saddam Hussein’s birth, and seven years before George W. Bush was born and yet, save for a few details, the story could almost have been about a war in which those two men were the key figures.

I think it would be fair to say, probably from now until the end of the world, War will be looked at the same way it always has been. It will have the righteous reason for sacrificing lives, the common enemy made more frightening by media influence, people to oppose it, and the propaganda to perpetuate it. A decade or two from now, when a few of the students who are taking this class now are college professors themselves, their students will turn in their text message journals or video podcasts on their “reflective readings” and cite for the same reasons I have why “Pale Horse, Pale Rider” can resonate as much with modern readers as it did when it was first published.