What's in a Name?: Negotiating Marson's Identity in Richard Bausch's War Novel, Peace By: Tori Lane

                If the critical question to be explored is that which occurs at the intersection of war and story-telling, it is important to consider the character who maintains the majority of control of the main narrative, and the ways in which they engage with the story itself. For Richard Bausch’s Peace, that character is Corporal/Robert Marson. Marson, along with the rest of the cast, is in the particular space of dislocation which is a symptom of being a soldier at war. Not only are these characters attempting to make sense of the violence in war, but they are trying to make sense of their position within this new, and foreign landscape. This negotiation, often revealed through narrative or story-telling can reveal a multitude of important contextual clues regarding the function of story-telling to negotiate war and violence. However, I find the particular moments in which an opportunity of story-telling is withheld, to be more compelling in revealing the particular way Marson negotiates his identity in a landscape of war.

Stuart Hall’s chapter “Cultural Identity and Diaspora” from the book Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader provides a definition of cultural identity which I will engage within this analysis. Hall contends,“ cultural identity is not a fixed essence at a point lying unchanged outside history and culture it is not some universal and transcendental spirit inside us on which history has made no fundamental mark. It is not once and for all. It is not a fixed origin to which we can make some final absolute return. […] It is always constructed through memory, fantasy, narrative and myth. Cultural identities are the points of identification, the unstable points of identification or suture, which are made with the discourses of history and culture. Not an essence, but a positioning” (Hall 395).This definition of identity both complicates and clarifies the use of story-telling in Richard Bausch’s novel Peace. Hall’s central argument is that identity is being formed all the time through memory, fantasy, narrative, and myth. While Peace is not exactly a diasporic text, Bausch’s characters are in a particular site of diaspora. That is to say, they are a group of people who have been displaced from their country of origin. Additionally, they are asked to interact in a culture which is not their own, nor is it the culture of the land which they inhabit. Their particular position as American soldiers in Italy during WWII, leaves them doubly dislocated from their geographical location in Italy and their site of origin in the U.S. However, the need to form an identity in this landscape remains important to both Bausch’s novel and the characters that drive its plot.

                Hall argues that identity is not a centered essence of a particular human existence. Rather, he contends that identity is formed in a peculiar place of intersection between a similar past and a changing future. This illustration summarizes the point of identity which Hall contends relies on a particular position in time:

 Nothing in this diagram is fixed. In other words, each vector is shifting all the time based on the experiences we have and the stories we tell about them. This negotiation of time, memory, narrative, and myth throughout Bausch’s Peace is fascinating. Beyond that, it indicates the ways in which these characters are interacting with their cultural landscape. This is evident in the ways Marson adjusts to his life as a soldier. He negotiates constantly which memories are to be shared and which are to be kept to himself. If, as Hall argues, Marson is at an intersection of identity formation, he would need to incorporate his memories into his present in order to drive his future, and form his identity. However, when presented with the opportunity to share a similar past as a left-handed pitcher with Mario. Bausch writes, “Marson did not tell the other…To do so would’ve meant having to talk about it, and he did not want to do that anymore” (Bausch 55). Instead, “[Marson] pray[s] for the strength to do what would be required, and every single minute he felt like curling up and crying. He kept all this deep inside and never showed any of it to anyone” (Bausch 55). In this short passage, Marson is negotiating a past memory, withholding narrative, and engaging in a prayer driven by a mythic past, all while time slows down to increments of ‘every single minute’.

                Within the framework of Hall’s cultural identity, time  informs the trajectory of identity formation. For Marson at war, “Time passed more slowly than he would have believed possible” (Bausch 55).  This passage is interesting for several reasons, depending on the ways in which we define time. In this particular case, this is the time of war from the eyes of a soldier. One who is displaced from their past, forging toward an unknown future, a future in which all time may cease to exist. As Marson “los[es] himself in the rote motion” of a soldier waiting for orders of a future task to complete, his constantly shifting identity is also slowed. His decision to not relate a memory through narrative, Marson subsequently suspends his own identity. This then, acts as a sort of reverse catalyst; time is slowed to a painful rate. The negotiation between Robert Marson, the man, and Corporal Marson, the soldier, becomes the sole focus of the scene.

In addition to Marson’s particular choice in this scene to not engage in a revelation of himself. He does notice how slow moving time is for him. Hall’s article offers a suffiecient critical lens for negotiating Marson’s actions as they relate to his position in the war. However, perhaps more salient is what Marson chooses to do with his timepiece in a final negotiation of time and identity in this scene. Bausch writes;

[It was f]ive minutes past seven o’clock in the morning in Sicily, and Marson imagined it all, back home, a reverie he had fallen into, and when he realized it and shut it off, he felt certain that at leat the hour of his dreaming must have gone by. He checked the time again: nine minutes past seven…He took the watch off and threw it over the wooden fence… [And] when he found it, e stood holding it in the shadow of a blasted tree and wept, not even looking around himself to see if he was alone. He packed it away among his things. And a little later, he sent it home, with a note asking his brother to keep it for him (Bausch 56).

Here, not only is time moving so slow Marson cannot advance, but it is moving so slow that he wants to get rid of it. If we are to understand that a cultural identity is formed in this intersection between a similar past, and a future of difference, then Marson’s negotiation is more than halted by the passing of time. His choice to send the watch to his brother back home reveals the necessity for Robert Marson to connect quickly with his past. The place where the memories are certain. A place from where the narrative has come. The place where the myth is still alive. Fantasy ceases to be driven toward a future point, and it is renegotiated through a familiar past. The chaos of war and its correlating tedium posits a shift in identity which Robert Marson is not yet ready to undertake.

Hall, Stuart. “Cultural Identity and Diaspora.” Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader. Ed. Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. 392-403. Print.