Dos Passos' Three Soldiers
1. The senselessness of war for domination and self-aggrandizement takes the lives of countless civilians throughout our world each day! Three Soldiers, an anti-war novel by John Dos Passos, recounts the desperation and hopelessness of American soldiers Fuselli, Andrews, and Chrisfield who undergo a moral transformation from their youthful view of war as a glorious endeavor to one of loss and betrayal. Dos Passos creates a tone of futility and hypocrisy in his depiction of the characters' transition from innocence to experience. The novel begins with the image of the mess hall where soldiers "shuffled" around "tables," "benches," and " board floors [that] . . . that had a faint smell of garbage mingled with the smell of disinfectant" (4). Dos Passos expresses Fuselli's naive attitude toward war that is shared by his two friends: "Oh, when we're ordered overseas, I'll show them, he thinks to himself . . . picturing to himself the long movie reels of heroism" (9). He is shocked by the cursing of the veteran nearby "swearing away his helpless anger" (9). In the next image, Andrews and Chrisfield both express their eagerness to fight the Germans (13) as they "pick up cigarette butts around the barracks" (13). Fuselli envisions himself " heroically carrying a wounded captain back to a dressing tent, pursued by fierce-whiskered men with spiked helmets" (25). Andrews later admits to himself that he had joined the military as an escape from "the horrors of the world that had fallen upon him " (15). Having a common goal with other men made him feel a part of something much bigger, and better, as Dos Passos ironically says, "to humble himself into the mud of common slavery"(15). The romantic notions of war and killing they had witnessed on screen did not correspond with their innocence and sensibilities. Andrews admits to himself "that he had thought of himself as a passionate person, but never in his life had he wanted to kill a man" (16). Chrisfield agrees, saying that he had almost killed a man years before but never would have "wanted to do that" (17). Andrews refuses to think of death and the harsh consequences of war (19), and wonders if this gathering of men is all just "futile madness" (20). While on the ship, Fuselli has second thought about dying. In the dark, dank hold of the vessel, men are cramped together (1), meningitis is spreading throughout the ship (32) , and as the Jewish soldier Eisenstein suggests, they were herded there as "meat for the guns" in a "system that turns men into beasts" (28-29). When a soldier died there from disease, the officers threw his body to the sharks (33). Instead of courage, Fuselli is terrified by the blackness of the night, demands of army life, the contagious disease, the indifference of the officers, and the thought that he could be the next to die (34).
2. Dos Passos next uses the image of the convalescent camp to enhance the tone of war as madness and terror. While Fuselli is in the camp, he witnesses the anger and frustration of his first mentally ill victim of war. "Go ahead, you can't do nothin'. I can't never have nothing done worse than what's been done to me already," said the tragic sufferer resisting the Y man's help in the hospital (36). The patient's resentful response filled Fuselli with "terror, which he had never believed an American soldier could feel because he had only seen propaganda films of successful U.S. soldiers "pursuing terrified Huns across potato fields" (37). The distraught patient next alludes to "the poor soldiers" who "got in the way of a torpedo, and no one even found a button of their pants" (38). Fuselli asks Grey: " Say, Bill, ain't it different from what we thought it was going to be?"(40). Fuselli is overwhelmed with loneliness and despair. Dos Passos says Fuselli was "so far from anyone who cared about him, so lost in the vast machine" (41'). Throughout the novel, Dos Passos uses metaphors of machinery and broken toys to suggests that the soldiers were merely cogs in the military's organization, insignificant in any other context. Caught in the "treadmill" of routine army life, the young soldier feels lost and unimportant (41). Dos Passos uses the same metaphor when he describes Fuselli's learning he was going to the front: "But the faint sense of importance it gave him did not compensate for the feeling he had of being lost in the machine, of being as helpless as a sheep in a flock" (47). In a ward, Andrews thinks back upon his life in the military "in which all the little routine of the army seemed unreal, and the wounded men discarded automatons, broken toys laid away in rows" (141). Anderson reminisces about "all the months he had wasted in life" (142). At a bar one evening, Fuselli overhears Eisenstein telling a Frenchman, "And in the tyranny of the army, a man becomes a brute, a piece of machinery" (62). Sadly, Fuselli meets a woman named Yvonne, and after what he considers a legitimate courtship, proposes; she , however, laughs in his face, and Fuselli's sergeant steals his girl( 74-75). The young protagonist feels betrayed by the one he loves, as well as the military.The seemingly endless army routine, day after day, made him so despondent that despite his resistance, he felt "his feet would go on beating in time to the steps of the treadmill" (78). One morning, Fuselli's young friend Stockton refuses to "get out of bed," and after the officer in charge threatens court martial him, the other soldiers attempt to force him to stand. To their amazement, Stockton, frail and sick, dies just as they try to life him! This death of so young a man weakened by the the rigid military routine and the inhumanity of war leaves a indelible impression on Fuselli (85).
3. Dos Passos also uses the image of a dead German soldier who has blown his face away by committing suicide to demonstrate the horrors of war for both sides. Fuselli's friend Chrisfield sees the body on the ground and kicks it "with all his might." At the sight the faceless young victim, Chrisfield's "hatred suddenly ebbed out of him" (104). The author's description of the dead soldier depicts in graphic terms the young German's repugnance of war, as well. Chrisfield says, "Where the face had been was a spongy mass of purple and yellow and red, half of which stuck to the russet leaves when the body rolled over. Large flies with bright green shiny bodies circled about it. In a brown clay-grimed hand was a revolver" (104).Dos Passos uses the fly imagery in this context to suggest the physical, as well as the moral, corruption of war and those who profit from it. Andrews asks Chrisfield if it wouldn't be nice to sleep and not awaken until the war is over, and then "you could be a human being again" (107). The author also describes the hatred of the common soldiers for their officers to show how "war makes beasts of men," as Einenstein earlier suggested. For example, Anderson, who joined the service at the same time as Chrisfield and Fuselli, is promoted over them and now uses his rank to dominate them. Chrisfield's hatred of Anderson, as well as Fuselli's anger over the hypocrisy of officers who exercise all the privileges, plays a prominent role in the novel (108-111). Chrisfield often dreams of killing Anderson (128), and ultimately does so, with a hand grenade (132).
4. Dos Passos employs the image of John Andrews, a shell-shocked soldier with wounded legs in a hospital, to illustrate the indelible consequences and its deleterious impact upon the future of each soldier. Ironically, Andrews feels more of a sense of freedom in the hospital, where "no one shouts orders at him" (139). He thinks to himself that "there must be something more in the world than greed and hatred and cruelty" (148). There were courageous people such as Democritus, Socrates, Epicurus, and Christ (148). This phase denotes the beginning of Andrews' emotional transformation, "to live his life as he saw it in spite of everything and to denounce the "falseness" of the propaganda of greed and fear that "filled with more and yet more pain the already unbearable agony of human life" (149). After the war had ended, in the ward John Andrews and a soldier named Stalky who was suffering from tuberculosis were talking about going home, when the latter said, "I won't never go home . . . I wish the war'd gone on and on until everyone of them bastards had been killed in it." John then asked who it was in particular that he wanted to be killed, and Stalky replied, "The men who got us fellers over here." Andrews then bitterly responded, "But they'll be safe if every other human being" and was interrupted by the thundering of an officer's voice telling them about home (151). Dos Passos , in this passage, strong indicts governments that create wars and allow the leaders to sleep safely while the young and strong die for their inane policies.
5. Dos Passos creates irony by having the war continue in the hearts and minds of the characters even after the armistice is declared. Although the war has ended, the trio must continue the drudgery of routine infantry procedures. At first exhilarated by the news of victory, Andrews realizes that "his life would continue to be this slavery" (161)that it really "did not matter if the fighting stopped" because they would still "sleep in the fetid air . . .[and] march or stand in motionless row endlessly, futilely" (161). Andrews realizes that the war was hopelessly "grinding out lies with lives" (161). Even after the war, Andrews must fight against the deadening routine that numbed him" (182). Throughout his experiences in the military, Andrews frequently thinks of the Queen of Sheba, a composition of his (240), that praises her splendor and refinement, as a symbol of his creative nature and artistic potential, and contrasts it with the dreary and rigid authoritarianism of his current environment. Later in Paris, Andrews alludes to the Queen of Sheba, out of Flaubert," suggesting the sharp contrast between human desires and their fruition 223). Andrews imagines a musical score describing the suffering and enslavement of the soldiers called "Under the Yoke" (182). Andrews, an accomplished pianist and Harvard graduate, has his hopes of studying at the Sorbonne dashed when the colonel in charge of the entry lists tells him that the names have already been submitted (185), yet subsequently the orders were changed , and Andrews finds himself in Paris! (192). While there, Andrews sees Henslowe; they go to a cafe, and there he meets Heineman, an American soldier-opportunists . Heineman explains to Andrews the absurdity of the war and its inconsistencies: 1) the Peace Conference, 2) spies, 3) American officers AWOL, 4) the seven sisters, or those determined to find and kill him, along with Henslowe, whom he calls Sinbad (201). Andrews later meets Henslowe, Heineman, and a man named Aubrey who discuss the Lenin, the Czar's capture, the impending Russian Revolution, and the Peace Conference (210-212). Aubrey declares that they are facing a new age, a better one, but the chance will only come once their lifetimes, and they must step forward courageously, or sink into the unbelievable horrors of anarchy and civil war" (212). These same dreams and disappointments are expressed in Emma Goldman's Living My Life; Gide, Wright, Spender, and Koestler in The God That Failed; and in the ideas of Lincoln Steffens, as each of them ultimately realized the impossibility of the withering away of the State.
6. Dos Passos uses this Paris phase of Andrews' development to show his desire to change for the better, emotionally and spiritually. Now, Andrews sets out to "make up for" his "wasted" life (214). On his way to the Schola Cantorum, Andrews hears Fuselli's calling him (215). Fuselli tells Andrews that he was court-martialed, sentenced to hard labor, and is now very sick, yet not permitted to return home (215-216).In Paris, Andrews attends music classes and meets a young woman named Jeanne with whom he almost falls in love (246). As Jeanne visits his room, Andrews sees his uniform, it reminds him "of the hideous farce of making men into machines" instead of freeing them to enjoy of all life and its amenities (237-238). Sitting in a cafe, he ponders the condition of man in society, no longer tall in stature and integrity, but shrunken, morally and emotionally. "Whichever won," he thinks,"tyranny from above, or spontaneous organization from below, there could be no individuals"(246). In Paris, Andrews also meets Genevieve Rod, a fascinating young woman who inspires him by her appreciation for music and her sophistication (242). On a train to Chartres with Genevieve, Andrews tells her that one must "be a slave" to achieve anything. You only have to "choose your master" (252). Frustrated and desperate, Andrews deserts and meets a young woman named Rosaline who asks him to stay with them and guide their boat; another deserter takes him away to safety (277), and Rosaline's mother buys him a new set of clothes (269) Not long afterward, Andrews meets Chrisfield who is AWOL, too (279). The protagonist also meets Walters and Henslowe who try to persuade him to return to the army, but it "was no use talking about it" (274). Lonely and lovesick, Andrews returns to Paris to see Genevieve, but cannot at first tell her he is a deserter (298). The young soldier feels helpless and desperate, like "a toad hopping across a road in front of a steam roller" (298). Later, as the pair go out in her boat, he confesses. Dos Passos uses singing birds, silvery sky and cream- the beauty of nature with the insensitivity of war and its emotional consequences (302). Realizing his helplessness, Andrews changes the name of his musical composition to The Soul and Body of John Brown, a man who died to set others free (304). Genevieve, however, shows little compassion, and encourages him to rejoin the army because his notion of individual freedom does not correspond with society's. Shortly afterward, Genevieve and her family leave without telling him, and Madame Boncour demands his overdue rent, and receiving nothing , reported him to the authorities. As the M.P. leads him from his room, Andrew's music, first one sheet, then another, blew off the table, until the floor was littered with them," a symbolic loss of life and dreams.
7. Dos Passos uses irony to depict hypocrisy in what should have been an orderly military environment. Just as Chrisfield hated Anderson, and subsequently killed him, Chrisfield and Judkins express a similar contempt for Andrews who has escaped the drudgery of army life while they, the uneducated, must continue the marching and harsh routine on a daily basis, even after the war, with little or no hope of promotion or escape. The two men worry that they may have to remain in the military for the next fifteen years! (192-193). As with Anderson, Dos Passos demonstrates the resentment of civilians toward officers to prove how war, in Eisenstern's words, makes brutes and beasts of men. Dos Passos also uses the indifference of nature to contrast with the soldiers' suffering. As Chrisfield and Judkins march with their company, birds are singing among the budding trees,' and the Young grass, which generally denotes optimism and growth, in this sordid case, "kept the marks of the soldiers' bodies (194). In essence, Dos Passos juxtaposes the beauty of nature with the harsh indignity of military routine to express the absurdity and inhumanity of war, and to condemn those who profit from it. Ashe and Genevieve go on a walk afterward, Andrews is stopped by an MP who beats and charges him with desertion (256). Now in the Garbage Detail , he tragically realizes that a person would rather "put up with things than make an effort to change them" (259). Dos Passos uses this remark to indict an entire society based upon profit and domination.
8. In essence, Dos Passos' persona John Andrews uses the term "slave psychology" to express the government's use of power over men (245). After the war, Andrews visits a man named Spencer Sheffield in a futile attempt to find a way of taking university courses in France (177); Andrews learned of this policy from Henslowe, an AWOL who persuaded Andrews to accompany him to Paris after the announcement of the Allied victory (163). When Sheffield declares his regret at being unable to fight, Andrews said that he "did not think that butchering people ever does any good" (177). His realization denotes a second phase of Andrews' moral transformation, as he realizes that social pressure from society and the government compelled him to act against his conscience, that he had been too weak to defend his own convictions (177). Dos Passos clearly suggests that the same social pressure is exerted on young men and women today. In Ideas are Weapons (1939), critic Max Lerner expresses the following description of Dos Passos' trilogy entitle U.S. A. which recounts the materialistic heyday of the Roaring Twenties and its tragic collapse following the Crash of 1929. In Lerner's words, "Dos Passos has caught unforgettably the flow of American life at its highest, just before the Ice Age of the depression set in. The three books together form as complete a record as we have in fiction of the crest of American capitalist culture. If America is ever destroyed by war or overwhelmed by fascist barbarism, later generations may dig up these books and read what manner of lives we led" (Lerner 286). In essence, this transformation from innocence to awareness symbolized the coming-of-age of a large segment of American and European society. As Hannah Arendt describes this new awareness in the following passage, taken from The Origins of Totalitarianism: "The genuineness of these feelings can be seen in the fact that very few of this generation were cured of their war enthusiasm by actual experience of its horrors. The survivors of the trenches did not become pacifists. They cherished an experience which, they thought, might serve to separate them definitely from the hated surroundings of respectability . . . Nor did they yield to the temptation to idealize this past; on the contrary, the worshippers of war were the first to concede that war in the era of machine could not possibly breed virtues like chivalry, courage, honor, and manliness, that it imposed on men nothing but the experience of bare destruction together with the humiliation of being only small cogs in the majestic wheel of slaughter"(Arendt 328-329).
Works Cited
Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1979.
Dos Passos, John. Three Soldiers. Thomas Fasano, editor. Claremont, California: Coyote Canyon Press, 2007.
Lerner, Max. Ideas are Weapons:The History and Uses of Ideas.New York: The Viking Press, 1939.