John Thompson

Unit Plan

English 112B

Literature for Young Adults

Dr. Mary Warner

 

Children�s Crusades:

War Stories as Young Adult Literature

 

            In 1999, as a freshman in college, I had the great opportunity to spend a semester studying in Mexico. I spent most of that semester in gorgeous Guadalajara, Mexico�s second biggest city, but during the final week of my stay took a whirlwind tour of the Capitol City. I saw the Pyramids, the Virgen de Guadalupe, the home of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, and the Museum of Anthropology, and was duly impressed by them all. But the most memorable, the most moving attraction to me in all of the Federal District was Chapultepec Castle, site of the last major battle of the U.S. Invasion of Mexico, in September of 1847.

            The U.S. prevailed in that fight, and we have Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California to show for it, but the battle was hard-won. Both sides experienced immense casualties, and many American observers�among them Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses Grant and Henry Thoreau�questioned the justness and validity of the conflict, which directly led to America�s own Civil War two decades later.

            But what struck me most about Chapultepec was a large marble monument at the base of the hill, which consisted of six tall white columns surrounding the Mexican flag and a statue of a mother holding her children. Inscribed below the statue were the words, �A los defensedores de la patria���To the defenders of the country.� The monument was erected in honor of Mexico�s national heroes, Los Ni�os H�roes  (The Child Heroes), six military cadets between the ages of thirteen and nineteen who gave their lives rather than admit defeat in the battle. One of the cadets, Juan Escutia, was said to have wrapped himself in the Mexican flag and jumped to his death from the roof of the castle. One hundred years after the battle, as the dust was settling from the Second World War, Harry Truman became the first U.S. President to visit Mexico City and, in a simple gesture that won the hearts of millions of Mexicans, laid a wreath at the monument. Fifty years later, Bill Clinton did the same.

            I must confess to not having heard of the Child Heroes prior to my semester in Mexico, but the monument and the nation�s reverence for the young cadets reminded me of one of my favorite books as a teenager, Kurt Vonnegut�s Slaughterhouse-Five, subtitled The Children�s Crusade. The title comes from the name of the makeshift underground prison that the book�s 22-year-old protagonist (and Vonnegut himself) inhabits during the bombing of Dresden, Germany, near the end of World War II. The subtitle comes from a conversation the author claims to have had with the wife of an old war buddy, the text of which appears in the first chapter of Slaughterhouse-Five:

 

�You were just babies then!� she said.

�What?� I said.

�You were just babies in the war�like the ones upstairs!�

I nodded that this was true. We had been foolish virgins in the war, right at the end of childhood.

            �But you�re not going to write it that way, are you.� This wasn�t a question. It was an accusation.

            �I�I don�t know,� I said.

            �Well, I know,� she said. �You�ll pretend you were men instead of babies, and you�ll be played in the movies by Frank Sinatra and John Wayne or some of those other glamorous, war-loving, dirty old men. And war will look just wonderful, so we�ll have a lot more of them. And they�ll be fought by babies like the ones upstairs.�

            So then I understood. It was war that made her so angry. She didn�t want her babies or anybody else�s babies killed in wars. And she thought that wars were partly encouraged by books and movies.

            So I held up my right hand and I made her a promise: �Mary,� I said, �I don�t think this book of mine is ever going to be finished. I must have written five thousand pages by now, and thrown them all away. If I ever do finish it, though, I give you my word of honor: there won�t be a part for Frank Sinatra or John Wayne.

            �I tell you what,� I said, �I�ll call it �The Children�s Crusade.��

            She was my friend after that.  (Vonnegut, 14)

 

            I propose using Vonnegut�s novel as a starting point for a unit on war literature, with this quote as its centerpiece. If a defining characteristic of Young Adult Literature is that its protagonists are young adults, then war literature, if it is honest, qualifies as Young Adult Literature. Actual statistics are difficult to verify, but the consensus among military scholars is that 17-24 has been and remains the most-represented age bracket (45%) among enlisted men in the U.S. Armed Forces. In an 11th or 12th grade World Literature class, chances are that many of my students will have already received Selective Service registration documents in the mail, and some will likely have talked with on-campus recruiters. Older siblings and peers may very well be serving overseas. War is an immediate concern for teens�much more so than for their parents and teachers.

            In addition to the assigned reading of Slaughterhouse-Five, students will be exposed in class to short stories, poems and vignettes from war novels from many different countries and time periods. One worry in creating a unit on war literature is that it could easily become a sort of �boy�s club� of authors and protagonists. In Her War Story: Twentieth Century Women Write About War, editor Sayre P. Sheldon writes,

 

Yet war literature is still seen as almost exclusively male. The reason is one of definition: war literature is traditionally about being in war, more precisely about being in combat. Women are more likely to be victims than perpetrators of war. By limiting war literature to actual combat, men have claimed war as their subject. The claim is no longer valid, if it ever has been. The twentieth century has redefined the meaning of combat and expanded the territory of war to include women in larger numbers than ever before. When the technological advances of modern war targeted civilians, the homefront became the frontline. Women took an active part in war whether or not by choice. Modern war reaches everywhere. There is less demarcation between where war is and is not taking place and where it begins and ends. (Sheldon, x)

 

            With this wider definition of war literature, it is valuable to select supplementary material with an eye for multiple voices, including young women and men, people with various cultural backgrounds and political leanings, different time periods, even different genres.

 

FIRST THINGS FIRST:

 

Prior to introducing Slaughterhouse-Five to students, consider using one or more of the following activities.

 

1. Play a classic protest song, such as Stevie Wonder�s �Big Brother� (preferably on vinyl) to fuel some discussion. What is Stevie referring to when  he says, �Your name is Big Brother�You say that you�re tired of me protesting children dying everyday.�

Another good song is Paul Hardcastle�s late 80�s dance hit �19��named for the average age of U.S. GIs in Vietnam.

 

2. Direct students to PBS�s online activities dealing with Los Ni�os H�roes. It�s helpful if they know something about the Mexican American War, but not absolutely necessary.  Discussion/ Journal questions may include:

a. What memorials (war or otherwise) are you familiar with/ have you visited any specific monuments?

            b. Why do you think Los Ni�os H�roes are honored with a memorial?

c. Were the Child Heroes brave? Were they foolish?

d. Why do you think there are no national monuments in the U.S. commemorating the Mexican-American War?

Form groups and have students design a U.S. war memorial, either for the Mexican War or another that they know about. Make sure they answer these questions about their memorial:

            a. What is the goal of your memorial?

            b. What is the target audience of your memorial?

            c. Who would your memorial honor?

            d. What words, if any, would be on your memorial?

            e. What would your memorial look like?

            f. Where would your memorial be built?

3. Other open-ended questions:

a. What is the Selective Service? How does it work? If there�s no draft, why does it still exist?

b. Do you know anyone who has served or is currently serving in the Armed Forces? How old were they/are they?

c. Brainstorm depictions of war in the movies or on television. How is it portrayed? Is it glamorous? How old do the soldiers look? Do you think these portrayals are accurate? What do you think is the most accurate film portrayal of war?

            If time allows, Chapter 1 of Slaughterhouse-Five can be read aloud in class�otherwise, it can be assigned as reading for homework (some books are best when discovered alone), with students prepared the next class session to answer the questions:

            a. What is the subtitle to Slaughterhouse-Five?

            b. What is the meaning of that subtitle?

For the 10 chapters of the novel, the daily routine will be similar: brief discussion of a chapter at the beginning of class, preview of the next chapter at the end, and supplementary readings of parallel texts in between.

At the end of the second week, students will choose a companion text to delve into independently. This text can be a story or poem we sampled in class, another novel, a movie, a song or a work of art, as long as it ties in to the theme of �Children�s Crusades.� Students will then create a project in order to present their work to the class. Possible forms that the project could take might include:

 

1. Creating a three-dimensional monument to a person, group of people, or event from their chosen text. For example, A Dresden Monument.

2. Writing and performing a song�protest or patriotic (or both)�about an event from the text.

3. Revising a portion of an unrealistic or over-glamorized text so that it more accurately reflects the language and behavior of a young adult.

4. Envisioning a meeting between characters from separate texts. For example�an interviewee from The Greatest Generation or Six War Years meets Billy Pilgrim (Slaughterhouse-Five) shortly after the war.

5. Performing a dramatic monologue (like a spoken letter home) capturing highlights of the protagonist�s experience.

 

Among titles to be sampled in class:

 

The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane: The story of a young boy who joins the Union forces in the Civil War. Before going to battle, he spends his time at the army camp dreaming. But suddenly a great fear takes hold of him�what if he should become frightened and run from the scene of the battle? (Book Jacket)

 

�Flower of Youth� by Katherine Tynan: In �Flower of Youth� Tynan sought optimistic solace in the idea that World War I was making heaven a more wholesome and cheerful place, populating it now with clean and laughing lads. (Fussell, 30)

 

�Epitaphs of the War� by Rudyard Kipling: Kipling�s own son died in World War I, and these brief poems are quick to peel off the glamorous fa�ade of young soldiers. (Fussell, 193)

 

The Greatest Generation by Tom Brokaw: The award-winning anchorman crisscrosses America to interview veterans of World War II, who willingly tell of their prewar, war, and postwar experiences. Leonard �Bud� Lomell comments, upon attending the Hollywood premiere of Saving Private Ryan, that Tom Hanks and the actors portraying his men were much older than the soldiers in the war. �I was one of the older ones at twenty-four,� he says.

 

Six War Years, 1939-1945: Memories of Canadians at Home and Abroad by Barry Broadfoot: Broadfoot, a Canadian journalist, has a remarkable ability to get people talking without restraint, as he does here in a collection of anonymous utterances by all sorts of people. (Fussell, 448)

 

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis: The four Pevensie children flee war-ravaged London during the second World War, only to find themselves as child warriors engaged in an epic battle for the magical world of Narnia.

 

�Song of Becoming� by Fadwa Tuqan: Describes young Arab boys in 1969, throwing their stones against the armed Israeli army. Their actions preceded the official Palestinian uprising  or Intifadah by eighteen years. (Sheldon, 274)

 

�The Vietnamese Mother� by Huong Tram: Expresses the similarity of a mother�s feelings in wartime with that of the �enemy� mother. (Sheldon, 271)

 

Persepolis: The story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi: In powerful black and white comic strip images, Satrapi tells the story of her life in Tehran from ages six to fourteen, years that saw the overthrow of the Shah�s regime, the triumph of the Islamic Revolution, and the devastating effects of the war with Iraq. (Book Jacket)

 

Beasts of No Nation by Uzodinma Iweala: Agu is a young African boy living in an unnamed West African country torn apart by war. He is separated from his mother and sister, then sees his father shot to death by rebels. These rebels take him into their group and force him to do unspeakable things. (Book Talk by Thana Acampora)

 

CONCLUDING ACTIVITIES

 

The allure of war literature may be that it puts its protagonists in exaggerated, sometimes epic circumstances that test the limits of human behavior. There is also, particularly in the works chosen for this unit, a sense of being privy to a well-kept secret. In his introduction to The Norton Book of Modern War, editor Paul Fussell states that

 

�No government is happy to have the actualities of modern war disclosed, aware that recruiting and conscription are the more threatened the more modern war writing focuses on blown-off legs and arms and stupid orders and belly wounds and mistaken �political� purposes. (25)

 

So perhaps war literature is about divulging secrets: The fire-bombing of Dresden was as bad as, if not worse than Hiroshima. Fighting men are, in fact, little more than boys. The enemy mother is affected by war in much the same way as our own mothers. At the close of the unit, students should have an appreciation for the truths that modern war literature might expose, as well as a healthy skepticism toward any medium that claims to present the whole truth.

Like war, portrayals of the lives of young adults in the media are often clouded with half-truths and glamorization. What truths might our students disclose about modern adolescence�the pressures, the dreams, the daily struggles�if they were given the opportunity? What lies and secrets might they expose? They are on the front lines, and are thus the most capable of reporting to us. As a concluding assignment for the unit, I will ask students to write an expos��anything from a minor misconception of adolescent life to a major (preferably not embarrassing) secret�either in journal format or for sharing.

 

WORKS CITED

 

Brokaw, Tom. The Greatest Generation. New York: Random House, 1998.           

 

Cantor, Carrie Nichols. The Mexican War. Chanhassen, MN: The Child�s World, 2003.

 

Crane, Stephen. The Red Badge of Courage. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1894.

 

Fussell, Paul. The Norton Book of Modern War. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1991.

 

Iweala, Uzodinma. Beasts of No Nation. New York: Harper Collins, 2005.

 

Lewis, C.S. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Great Britain: Collins, 1950.

 

Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood. New York: Pantheon, 2003.

 

Sheldon, Sayre. Her War Story: Twentieth Century Women Write About War. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1999

 

Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaugtherhouse-Five. New York: Dell Publishing, 1969.

 

Wonder, Stevie. �Big Brother,� Talking Book (LP). Detroit, MI: Tamla Records, 1972.

 

http://www.pbs.org/kera/usmexicanwar/educators/creating_a_memorial.html