"Peace," a Passage Discussion by Cody R. Tucker

"Walberg never knew what hit him, and everything of him was gone now, all of it, the memory and the stories and the hope of being as funny and entertaining as the others- the desire to be a story-teller, like Marson- and the generations too. Generations. His children, and their children. The thought went through Marson like an evil vapor" (Basch, 63).

This is said by our novel’s narrator while Marson is staying up and re-playing the death of a fellow soldier in his head. This particular soldier, Walberg, acts as an excellent symbol for what story-telling means in the context of war. This quote about Walberg cumulates everything that is tragic about story-telling and war. According to the narrator, the tragedy of Walberg's death is the fact that he can no longer tell stories. Albeit, the narrator claims that Walberg was never skilled at the art of story-telling. The narrator does theorize that Walberg couldn't tell good stories because he didn't have the life-experience to back them up, like the others. He has so little to say about his own life that his stories only seem to focus upon his father. Now that Walberg is dead, he'll never be able to find such experience. This is because of the death and violence of war.

The narrator also likens story-telling to a means of living on in the eyes of the generations of offspring. Marson does not really believe that he'll survive the war. This is why it is painful for him to talk, or think, about the past. This is because Marson knows that he can never go back. Yet, the ability to tell stories about, and even re-tell them, proves useful in that it changes the perception of motivations and meanings of past events. The best example of this is the murder of the 'whore.' The worthiness of her death is often debated. The way the story is told, depending upon the witness, influences the way in which generations of the future can be potentially see this case. Then the very nature of truth becomes questionable at this point. Had the ‘whore’ lived, perhaps would have had a stronger voice in her own case. She would have had a story to tell. So this book is ultimately suggesting that history is written by the winners (those who survive).