War and Change
By: J. Garcia
Tags: War, Literary Criticism, Holocaust, Literature, Liminal Thinking

War and Change

A Quick View of the Liminal Spaces War Creates in 20th Century Literature

War forces change. It forces individuals to cross national, gender, socio-economic-political boundaries and for a while live in a liminal space. Experiences can vary but the state of war generally uproots old norms creating liminal areas. Liminal spaces, in turn, lead characters to gain experience and knowledge. The characters of Night by Elie Wiesel, The Lover by Marguerite Duras, and The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot discover the frailty of human systems.

The most important lesson Wiesel’s character, in Night, seems to learn is the impermanence and frailty of human systems. “The writings of adults who narrate their childhoods bear the scars of a lived experience” (Jaron 208). The narrator explains the scars of his experiences with the impermanence of his society when he says, “Most people thought that we would remain in the ghetto until the end of the war… Afterward everything would be as before. The ghetto was ruled by neither German nor Jew; it was ruled by delusion” (Wiesel 12). Sighet, the ghetto, and even the camps become a gateway to life. An impermanent state that shows the narrator that fragility of any system. The liminal experiences of war are in themselves the gateway to the knowledge that everything is susceptible to irreversible change.

The narrator of The Lover also learns from the liminality of war that ideas and alliances may change rather quickly. The narrator states, “two years after the war, I was a member of the French Communist party. The parallel is complete… the two things are the same lack of judgement, the same superstition… that consist in believing in a political solution to a personal problem” (Duras 62). The narrator sees the political system as an extension of the war. One of two ways to disrupt a system. “Political identity is itself a multi-dimensional concept shaped not only by the political ideology, practices and institutions… but also by the relationship with the state and its political institutions” (Berti 118). She learns that systems can rise and fall easily and, often, offer no personal solutions.

The Waste Land’s character learns the seriousness of war. By taking a global approach the character sees the damage the path of war causes society but, also, nature. Elliot writes:

What is that sound high in the air

Murmur of maternal lamentation

Who are those hooded hordes swarming

Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth. (Elliot 26)

The disruption manifest by the lamenting mothers shows a world torn apart by war. The main character learns that to improve and avoid the cycles of building, destruction, and rebuilding of war society must move away from war and embrace unity with nature.

The characters of each of the above mention novels learn about the fragility of human created systems. They watch as their worlds are torn apart by war and suffer from the liminal state between war and peace. They learn that little, if anything, humans create is permanent. Also, they experience the frivolousness of political participation along with the understanding that change is necessary for survival.