Jess Shankland
Bausch's Peace
Within
chapter six of Richard Bausch's Peace, after being told the backgrounds of
Marson and Joyner, we get a peek into Asch's life. We are told about the dreams
that Asch keeps having about the bombing in Africa that he experienced. The
line following that passage is: "Marson had found him (Asch) pleasurable
to be around because of the way he had of turning everything into an
observation . . ." (Bausch, 28) This line is important to the concept of
all the story-telling that goes on within the rest of Peace and suggests that the story itself, as a whole, is an
observation.
The idea of observing
fits in with the routinization of war. Soldiers must be observant in order to
survive, in order to report, in order to do their duty successfully. Observation
is important to storytelling in that it helps to captivate the reader. It helps
to form a solid picture of what is happening now on the surface, as well as beneath.
Observing in story-telling is indirect in that it is not straight-forward information
but instead, a telling or re-telling of something that is/was being experienced.
The word
"pleasurable" also stands out in the passage in that narratives
should be pleasurable to keep the reader's attention, to draw the reader away
from the world they are in. Marson finds Asch's observing capabilities
pleasurable because they go beyond what is on the surface. At war, you have the
soldiers on the front, literally, but they have lives, they are human beneath
their soldier uniform, their soldier tactics. Story-telling is an observable
pleasure that is able to be passed on and experienced by others.
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