Literary Summits

This week, I plowed through the remainder of Part Ten, which focuses on the Battle of Borodino from French and Russian perspectives. It’s the heaviest war section so far, and I suspect it is the climax of the war section of “War and Peace.”

I was captivated by parts of it — Pierre wandering and watching it all happen from the epicenter of the chaos, Napoleon struck by unfamiliar doubts, and Kutuzov (the Russian commander-in-chief) caught up in the spirit of the Russian army. It also reminded why “good” war stories are so difficult to find.

First, what makes a war story “good”?

It’s got to be more than a matter of the right side prevailing against the wrong side. In this case, it’s clear that Tolstoy wants us to think that “Russian” equals “good” and “Napoleon” equals “bad.” But he goes beyond that, by showing the depths to which Napoleon has twisted his perspective so that 50,000 deaths are a sign of progress, not a massive tragedy. And simply showing carnage and chaos doesn’t make it a “good” story for me — I remember walking out of Saving Private Ryan because even if it was “true to life” as all the critics were saying, I was overwhelmed by having to sit and watch without being able to respond in any other way.

Even the recent film Letters from Iwo Jima was an example of the difficulty of showing the hell of war, in this case, from a Japanese perspective; one friend and co-worker argued that it was simply too much blood, too many explosions, too many flying body parts — “gorifying war,” if you will. No matter how empathetic/beautiful the story behind the combat scenes is, it’s marred by the ugliness of war.

I read an article last year about the resurgence of war stories on Broadway and in screens that have failed — failed to bring audiences in spite of earning critical acclaim and awards galore. The article stated that at a time when people are seeing snippets of real war on TV and documentaries, there’s little incentive to pay extra to be exposed to another “humanizing” war story, no matter how heartwrenching.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying we cut out the heart and just tell a “jolly good war romp.” It is good that you care about the people involved — I mean, when I saw Star Wars Episodes 2: Attack of the Clones, I couldn’t appreciate the battle scenes — I couldn’t feel much of anything when row after row of faceless droids were mown down. There is nothing at stake, no tension.

Another parallel — peewee hockey. Nobody goes to watch preteens play hockey because they want to see the game played at its finest. The people who shiver in the stands game after game are there because they care about someone — their son or daughter is on the ice. That’s what makes the game exciting. You’re pulling for someone.

That’s probably Tolstoy’s biggest accomplishment with this book — he’s brought me ringside to the battlefield of a war that seems pointless, in the scope of history. Yet I care about the outcome because I care about Pierre, about Prince Andrei, and about what’ll happen to the other families whose lives I’ve followed during the uneasy peace. And that keeps me reading.

So does that make this a good war story?