PATRIOTISM:

THE OLDEST LIE

Stephen Kilgour examines the historical representations of war in literature.
Thus it is to textual representations of war we must turn in
“This reminds me of when I was climbing the bridge on the order to provide the most authentic replication of the
Macdhui and the Japs were dive bombing the ship,” my
experience of war possible in our safe, secure society.
grandfather said as we climbed the stairs to the front door of
my aunty’s house. He always called them ‘the Japs’, a
Steven Spielberg’s 1998 film Saving Private Ryan provides
response common to many of his generation who suffered at
some insight into the horrendous experiences which our
the hands of the invading force.
veterans often kept to themselves
upon their return. After all, who
He never spoke much about the war “Textual representations of could fathom the living nightmare of
whilst I was growing up but, as his
dementia had developed, he began to
war provide the most a war zone if they had no first-hand
experience?
open up about his experiences. There authentic replication of the
was a window in time before his death
in 2008 in which he began to share experience of war possible in Spielberg seeks to bridge this gap
through the opening segue from the
before he was no longer able to. For
our safe, secure society.” tortured memories seen on the face
the first time I was able to see the
of Private James Ryan conveyed
depth of the impact the war had had on him.
through the tightly-framed close-up shot to the ferocity of
the landings on Omaha Beach in World War II. Through the
Too often in modern Australian society, insulated by both
cut between these scenes, Spielberg suggests that the
time and distance from first-hand war experiences, we do not
suffering engendered by war is not the a mere moment but
appreciate the suffering of our ancestors who fought in wars
rather a lifelong affliction.
far from home. My grandfather and most of his comrades
have passed on, rendering the world wars a distant cultural
The portrayal of the inconceivably brutal fury of war is further
memory discovered only through textbooks and mass media.
exemplified in the opening scene by Spielberg’s diegetic
soundscape of constant, chaotic barrages of gunfire,
explosions, and the whistles of shells. As a counterpoint,
shots of the at times disoriented protagonist, Captain Miller,
seek to reveal the suffering he is experiencing by hushing the
sound, replicating his momentary confusion.

This overwhelming sonic environment of war is something

World War I soldier Wilfred Owen sought to replicate in his
poetry. His onomatopoeic auditory imagery of the “rifles’
rapid rattle” in ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ conjures similar
images to that of Spielberg’s Omaha Beach landings.

However, Owen goes deeper, seeking to convey the suffering

of soldiers through intertwining the horrors of the battlefield
The Macdhui today. Source: Wikimapia.org with religious imagery in an attempt to interrogate the power
of religion to overcome the intensity of the trench hierarchy has betrayed our serving men and women by their
experience. His depiction in ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ of refusal to accept responsibility for the increased mental
soldiers dying “as cattle,” their funeral containing only the health issues associated with mefloquine and tafenoquine.
“shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells” detaches their
deaths from the progaganda of patriotic, glorious deaths. The reality is that the suffering engendered by war is caused
Instead, Owen suggests that the blame for the soldiers’ by those who are most distant from the war, those whose
suffering can be placed squarely at the feet of the generals lives are relatively untouched by the consequences.
and politicians who play no active part
in the war. Patriotism, the oldest lie of them all,
“Patriotism is an incoherent has been used and continues to be
In his poem ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’, used to guilt young men and women
Owen savages this propaganda,
rationalisation used by power to fight. The glory is promoted; the
declaring that the Latin saying “Dulce structures to excuse the true horrors deliberately obscured
et decorum est / Pro patria mori” is a from view.
‘Lie’. The capitalisation of the term ‘Lie’ slaughter of young men with
signifies an all-encompassing, otherwise bright futures.” Owen and Spielberg are united in
intergenerational betrayal of ‘children’ their message that war is not
and hence signifies the suffering engendered by all wars, not glorious and that to die in war is anything but the dignified,
just his own. glorious death military leaders portray it to be.

Owen’s attack on military and political leadership continues Many years after my grandfather’s passing, we discovered
in ‘Insensibility’ where he attacks the fact that “By choice something which he had not shared with his family. As the
they made themselves immune / To pity and whatever Macdhui was going down, mortally wounded by a Japanese
moans in man,” going as far as to say that these ‘dullards’ are torpedo, my grandfather, unable to swim, was up on deck
‘cursed’. putting out fires rather than scrambling for the lifeboat.

Spielberg also uses Saving Private Ryan to give ordinary Whilst his actions saved lives, his survival was no more
soldiers a voice. After being allocated the mission to save dignified than the deaths of his fellow soldiers.
Private James Ryan, Jackson states that “this entire mission is
a serious misallocation of valuable military resources.” I am grateful to have had this opportunity to gain insight into
Spielberg’s use of dialogue here is a particularly prescient my grandfather’s experiences because it gave me a brief
given that Jackson is killed as the mission to save Ryan draws glimpse of his suffering and hence provided me with a deeper
to a close. understanding of how war changed him and made him into
the man I knew. Literature is our best hope of avoiding
This criticism of military command builds on the prior scene similar trauma afflicting future generations.
where General George Marshall decides to risk the lives of
Captain Miller and several other soldiers to rescue one man,
Private Ryan. In order to sway his subordinates, Marshall
invokes patriotism by reading Abraham Lincoln’s 1864 Bixby
Letter. The message, then, is that patriotism is an incoherent
rationalisation used by power structures to excuse the
slaughter of young men with otherwise bright futures.

Thus both Owen and Spielberg send a clear message to their

audiences: the horrific experiences which scar soldiers for life
are a direct result of the view of a nation’s youth as “Men,
gaps for filling,” to cite Owen, by politicians and military
leadership.

In contemporary society, we may at times become

complacent, assuming that times have changed and that the
brutal, careless treatment of our armed forces is a relic of the
past.

Australian society should not be content with simply

assuming that its government is loyal. After all, the military