A Fable

The marshal, also referred to as the old general and the generalissimo, is the head of the French Army. With the war being fought so predominantly in French territory, he pulls rank over the generals from Britain and America to lead the war effort against the Germans. As such, he is the most powerful character to appear in the book and the living embodiment of the officers’ ideas about war and glory. His power gives him the capacity to spare or condemn the mutinous corporal who he later discovers is his long-forgotten son. In this sense, the marshal plays the role of the Biblical figure of Pontius Pilot, the man who condemns the Christ figure to death to preserve the status quo. The marshal never questions the importance of the military. He never questions his generals in their view that the most important concern is to restart the war in the same fashion. To the marshal, this is obvious. He has risen to the ranks of marshal not because he challenges authority, but because he so completely represents the military officers’ views about War and Peace. War is a vehicle for glory, a way to achieve a certain kind of peace which can be celebrated with brandy and medals. The peace brought about by the corporal’s false armistice is not just an inconvenience to the marshal, but a repudiation of everything he represents. He becomes Pilot because he is the institution which must condemn his own son so as to preserve the authority of the institution.

The Quartermaster General speaks at length about his knowledge of the marshal’s past. The marshal comes from a wealthy family, in a political and financial sense. From a young age, he was expected to achieve great things. Whether in the political, industrial, or military spheres, people knew that—one day—he would be one of the most important men in France. The marshal’s history confronts the idea of destiny. The marshal’s destiny was to become the embodiment of the officer’s beliefs about War and Peace, even when he was still in military school. Even after he chose to exclude himself from France and Paris—sending himself out to the fringes of the Empire, defying the military’s orders, and fathering a child with an unknown woman—he was still respected and admired. In the time between his return from the periphery of the French Empire and the time at which the novel is set, he fulfils his destiny and becomes the most powerful man in the French military during the most devastating war in France’s history. Then, his son arrives. The corporal is a ghost from the marshal’s past, the nemesis whose crime of temporarily pausing the war prompts the marshal to choose between executing his own son or preserving the military’s status quo. The marshal chooses the military, fulfilling the destined promise of the feted golden boy.

Six years after the events of the novel, the marshal is dead. He receives a state funeral, and, in this new era of peace, his body is paraded through the packed streets to celebrate the victory that the marshal helped to achieve. This funeral contrasts with the small, anonymous burial of the marshal’s son. The corporal is unwittingly buried in the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Both men are buried in Paris, one as a commemoration of the military and one in the mistaken tribute to the men who were killed by the reckless military ventures that the marshal enshrined. The marshal, a man who prolonged the war by executing his own son, is celebrated as a hero. This is juxtaposed against the corporal, who was executed by his father for the crime of trying to end a brutal war. The juxtaposition between the two burials shows that the people care more about the manner in which a war ends than in the idea of peace at any cost.

If the corporal is allied with the enlisted men and the marshal represents the officer class, then the runner is the man who is able to cross the boundaries between these two separate worlds. The runner was once an officer who went to his superiors and asked to be demoted back to the rank of enlisted man. He has occupied the officers’ world, understood their ideology, and found it to be intolerable. He does not want to remain in that space as he feels more comfortable fighting and dying alongside the enlisted men, rather than sending such men to fight and die over small scratches of blasted out French farmland. The runner has witnessed the bloody vapidity of the officer class up close and rejected it, not turning away from the military as a whole, but allying himself with the enlisted men who he believes are victimized by the officers. This rejection of rank is an act of solidarity, choosing one side of the Class War over another. Through the runner, the novel explores the interplay between the officer and the enlisted classes.

The runner’s desire to demote himself comes from a place of empathy. He empathizes with the enlisted men and would rather fight and die alongside them than cause them any harm. This empathy is also evident in the way he seeks to learn more about those around him. He is fascinated by the private who collects life insurance from the other enlisted men, so he actively seeks out Sutterfield to learn more about the man’s story. Even after learning about the mysterious racehorse which supposedly made the men a fortune, the runner stands allied alongside the private. The enlisted men, he realizes, are not a homogenous group of marginalized people. They are complex and nuanced in their own right. When the private kicks him in the face, encouraged by a sergeant and an officer, the runner realizes all too well that his interest and his allyship are not always appreciated. Nevertheless, he does not lose the empathy that defines him.

The runner encourages others to act on the corporal’s beliefs and cross the battlefield unarmed. He is nearly killed when a barrage of artillery shells falls on him and the other unarmed men. The runner is badly maimed, losing an arm and a leg while sustaining a great deal of facial injuries. Despite these injuries, he is still committed to the ideal which prompted him to wander out into no-man’s land. He remains dedicated to the corporal, visiting his family and throwing the corporal’s medal at the marshal’s funeral parade. The runner wants to bring the corporal’s message to the rest of the world and he suffers accordingly. He tries to live his life in accordance with the teachings of a man who he never meets, but he suffers immeasurably for it. Despite his suffering, he never stops trying. As he tells the Quartermaster General when he is escorted away, he will “never” (437) die. His maimed body and his ideas will haunt the country, just as he haunts the marshal’s funeral.