The following is an excerpt from Book One, Chapter Three of Steinbeck's masterwork,
East of Eden. I think I was in the Army when I first read it, and this passage has always struck me as a powerful explanation of the regimentation of military life, especially in basic training. I've wanted to post it on fora previously, but since it would require a lot of reading and typing, I never have. I finally sat down for an hour and typed it up just now.
I was thinking about the controversy in a recent thread, about the severity of basic training techniques. As often happens, several grizzled old veterans tried to explain the situation to Ezekiel, who busily heaped disdain on all things military. Steinbeck's interpretation seems good food for thought on the subject. While coming from a character who deeply admires the military, it also presents many common criticisms of the military.
One may also bear in mind that Steinbeck did not serve in the military, but was a correspondent during the Second World War. He was also somewhat of a leftist for his time.
With his quiet and emotionally fragile son, Adam, about to enlist in the Army, Civil War veteran Cyrus Trask tries to help him understand what he will soon undergo. [Emphasis mine.]
Cyrus explained softly to Adam the nature of a soldier&.He told his son of the sad dignity that can belong to a soldier, how he is necessary in the light of all the failures of man the penalty of our frailties&.The humilities are piled on a soldier, so Cyrus said, in order that he may, when the time comes, be not too resentful of the final humility a meaningless and dirty death....He said, Ill have you know that a soldier is the most holy of all humans because he is the most tested the most tested of all&.Look now. In all of history men have been taught that killing men is an evil thing not to be countenanced. Any man who kills must be destroyed because this is a great sin, maybe the worst sin we know. And then we take a soldier and put murder in his hands and we say to him, Use it well, use it wisely. We put no checks on him. Go out and kill as many of a certain kind of classification of your brothers as you can. And we will reward you for it because it is a violation of your early training.
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Theyll first strip off your clothes, but theyll go deeper than that. Theyll shuck off any little dignity you have youll lose what you think of as your decent right to live and to be let alone to live. Theyll make you live and eat and sleep and *expletive deleted*it close to other men. And when they dress you up again youll not be able to tell yourself from the others. You cant even wear a scrap or pin a note on your breast to say, This is me separate from the rest.&.After a while&youll think no thought the others do not think. Youll know no word the others cant say. And youll do things because the others do them. Youll feel the danger in any difference whatever a danger to the whole crowd of like-thinking, like-acting men.
What if I dont? Adam demanded.
Yes, said Cyrus, sometimes that happens. Once in a while there is a man who wont do what is demanded of him, and do you know what happens? The whole machine devotes itself coldly to the destruction of his difference. Theyll beat your spirit and your nerves, your body and your mind, with iron rods until the dangerous difference goes out of you. And if you cant finally give in, theyll vomit you up and leave you stinking outside neither part of themselves not yet free. Its better to fall in with them. They only do it to protect themselves. A thing so triumphantly illogical, so beautifully senseless as an army cant allow a question to weaken it. Within itself, if you do not hold it up to other things for comparison and derision, youll find slowly, surely, a reason and a logic and a kind of dreadful beauty. A man who can accept it is not a worse man always, and sometimes is a much better man&.Some men there are who go down the dismal wrack of soldiering, surrender themselves, and become faceless. But these had not much face to start with&.But there are others who go down, submerge in the common slough, and then rise more themselves than they were, because because they have lost a littleness of vanity and have gained all the gold of the company and the regiment. If you can go down so low, you will be able to rise higher than you can conceive, and you will know a holy joy, a companionship almost like that of a heavenly company of angels. Then you will know the quality of men even if they are inarticulate. But until you have gone way down you can never know this.
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I want to tell you that a soldier gives up so much to get something back. From the day of a childs birth he is taught by every circumstance, by every law and rule and right, to protect his own life. He starts with that great instinct, and everything confirms it. And then he is a solider and he must learn to violate all of this he must learn coldly to put himself in the way of losing his own life without going mad. And if you can do that and, mind you, some cant - then you will have the great greatest gift of all. Look, son, Cyrus said earnestly, nearly all men are afraid, and they dont even know what causes their fear shadows, perplexities, dangers without names or numbers, fear of a faceless death. But if you can bring yourself to face not shadows but real death, described and recognizable, by bullet or saber, arrow or lance, then you need never be afraid again, at least not in the same way you were before. Then you will be a man set apart from other men, safe where other men may cry in terror. This is the great reward. Maybe this is the only reward. Maybe this is the final purity all ringed with filth.
