Returning soldier's story nuanced
By Ron Carlson |
July 27, 2013, Saturday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
THE returning military veteran is a firmly established character in American literature. Like most of the fiction that has preceded it, Roxana Robinson's new novel, "Sparta," places a young man in this role: Conrad, a Williams graduate who flies back home to the United States after four years in Iraq to face the weird vagaries of his homeland. At only 26, he sees American life with new eyes - or are they old eyes, those of a damaged warrior?
One of the many strengths of this engaging story is that Robinson doesn't treat post-traumatic stress disorder with that nifty abbreviation, PTSD, neatly buttoning it in place. Instead, she shows us a more insidious, layered and complex mix of debilitating psychological wounds, many of them sharpened by the astonishing contrast between driving the explosive roads of a war zone and walking down a crowded New York street.
Why is everyone in Manhattan carrying a bottle of water? Is dehydration an actual threat? How can young people be so careless as to walk with earbuds closing out their hearing, rendering them vulnerable to incoming danger? Why is everyone walking with such flagrant disregard to order? Even watching reality show contestants trying to erect a tent can be maddening. And so is the heightened awareness that determines where you sit in a restaurant, how you feel about backpacks on the subway. Suddenly nothing is innocuous. American life seems to be a relentless parade of negligence and harm.
Conrad's trauma is also awakened by his family and by familiar things that don't fit with a military man's visceral understanding of society, formed by the trauma of combat. He's seen unspeakable acts of violence, some involving soldiers who were his friends, and he's had the great luck and terrible burden of surviving when others did not. Pulled by an obligation to be the person his family had known, and pushed by the ghosts from his service, Conrad slowly begins simmering toward a boil.
"Sparta" was the name of Conrad's base outside Haditha, but Robinson also offers a short, sobering lesson on the ancient model of the hyper-military in Greece, which adds depth to the more jolting history of the horrifying experiences of the modern military in Iraq.
Of course we've seen soldiers like Conrad before: young men who become antisocial powder kegs, shocked by the laxity and privilege they find all around them upon their return from the war zone. But Robinson's Conrad has his own path. To him, the country brims with "sarcastic animosity." Robinson distinguishes Conrad best, reveals his tender and angry core, in her depictions of his relationships with his sister and brother, with his former classmates and, most powerfully, with his girlfriend, as they painfully circle each other, trying to reassemble, reinvent, reimagine how it might be possible to have a life together.
Conrad's mother is a therapist, and his father teaches law. They try to understand their son, but every gesture seems futile. Conrad makes his own efforts to cope, but he can't breach the new distance that has opened between him and his old life.
It's clear Conrad is a good Marine - he takes heart when he has a sense of purpose. In this nuanced novel, we watch this fine, troubled young man as he chooses his own mission for the home front.
One of the many strengths of this engaging story is that Robinson doesn't treat post-traumatic stress disorder with that nifty abbreviation, PTSD, neatly buttoning it in place. Instead, she shows us a more insidious, layered and complex mix of debilitating psychological wounds, many of them sharpened by the astonishing contrast between driving the explosive roads of a war zone and walking down a crowded New York street.
Why is everyone in Manhattan carrying a bottle of water? Is dehydration an actual threat? How can young people be so careless as to walk with earbuds closing out their hearing, rendering them vulnerable to incoming danger? Why is everyone walking with such flagrant disregard to order? Even watching reality show contestants trying to erect a tent can be maddening. And so is the heightened awareness that determines where you sit in a restaurant, how you feel about backpacks on the subway. Suddenly nothing is innocuous. American life seems to be a relentless parade of negligence and harm.
Conrad's trauma is also awakened by his family and by familiar things that don't fit with a military man's visceral understanding of society, formed by the trauma of combat. He's seen unspeakable acts of violence, some involving soldiers who were his friends, and he's had the great luck and terrible burden of surviving when others did not. Pulled by an obligation to be the person his family had known, and pushed by the ghosts from his service, Conrad slowly begins simmering toward a boil.
"Sparta" was the name of Conrad's base outside Haditha, but Robinson also offers a short, sobering lesson on the ancient model of the hyper-military in Greece, which adds depth to the more jolting history of the horrifying experiences of the modern military in Iraq.
Of course we've seen soldiers like Conrad before: young men who become antisocial powder kegs, shocked by the laxity and privilege they find all around them upon their return from the war zone. But Robinson's Conrad has his own path. To him, the country brims with "sarcastic animosity." Robinson distinguishes Conrad best, reveals his tender and angry core, in her depictions of his relationships with his sister and brother, with his former classmates and, most powerfully, with his girlfriend, as they painfully circle each other, trying to reassemble, reinvent, reimagine how it might be possible to have a life together.
Conrad's mother is a therapist, and his father teaches law. They try to understand their son, but every gesture seems futile. Conrad makes his own efforts to cope, but he can't breach the new distance that has opened between him and his old life.
It's clear Conrad is a good Marine - he takes heart when he has a sense of purpose. In this nuanced novel, we watch this fine, troubled young man as he chooses his own mission for the home front.
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