Death and the Mystical Experience Essay

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Displacement and The Trauma Of WarAfter surviving war, the displacement felt by returning American Vietnam Veterans is both mental and physical, with many unable to fully return home. Through Andrew Lam's "Slingshot", Louise Erdrich's “The Red Convertible" and Karl Marlantes’ What it’s Like to Go to War, we witness how the trauma of war surpasses all bounds, leaving its veterans with a deep sense of lasting displacement. The effects of this alienation on their psyche can be serious and long-term, leaving them permanently detached from any sense of home or safety, features that had once been so familiar before going to war. The futility of returning home is symbolized in the broken urn carrying a father’s ashes, destroyed on the point of delivery, in Lam’s “Slingshot.” Yet, Marlantes gives a higher sense of mortality by linking death to holiness at the outset of What it is Like to Go to War. Death becomes a passageway to another world—a spiritual world—and perhaps the true home of the soul that leaves the traumatized body in this world. The returning Vietnam Veterans of these stories cannot return home to their earthly home—but they do leave this world for another home—one that has no end on the other side. These veterans of war are displaced from this world by the violence of war—their spirits can no longer be held in a place where the humanity has become inhuman, and thus they invariably seek release.Tam’s “Slingshot” begins like an innocent story about mischievous children pretending to be killers with a slingshot. It unexpectedly morphs into a real life slap in the face about actual killers—soldiers in Vietnam—who killed and were killed, and it was no game. The father of the girl is brought home—or rather his ashes are brought home: he was one who knew the reality of violence, the reality of war, for he lost his life in Vietnam. Thus, what begins as a story about children pretending to kill with a slingshot becomes a horrific realization that killing is no pretend game: it is a fact of life, from which one cannot really ever escape or fully comprehend. That is why the story ends with the girl waving at the broken urn, over and over again, as though welcoming her father home, “unable to say a thing” (Lam). But what the girl is really doing is this: she is waving goodbye to her father from the other side of the grave. She is waving and waving, unable to do anything else because now the distance between them is too great to be bridged by anything physical.This idea of being unable to return home from war is supported by Erdrich in “Red Convertible”—in which Stephan, a PoW is too traumatized to reconnect with his brother Marty, who tries to bond with Stephan over the red convertible that the brothers purchased before the war. Stephan ends up drowning in a river, and Marty rolls the car in after him, symbolizing the burial of something that is gone. In short, the living do not return from the war even if they look alive when they come back. The cry of Marty, “Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up!” (Erdrich) is symbolic of the inability of the past to reconnect with the present after the war puts people into a kind of zombie-like existence from which it is impossible to recover.

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Marlantes shows the same idea in What It is Like to Go to War. Yet, he transcends the present by stating that “everything is touched by the holy when in the presence of death” as he watches a fish die (Marlantes 3). Marlantes describes this experience of watching death in these words: “In comes the spirit, out goes something holy, life perhaps, but I realized then that…

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…been unresolved for him in Vietnam; Henry cannot relate to those back at home. Their experiences have changed them just as any mystical experience will change a person, as Marlantes points out. A mystical experience is both deeply personal and profoundly transformative; it has the potential to alter one's view of the world, their sense of self, and understanding of reality. It can be a moment of insight, or an intensely emotional state; regardless, it is often overwhemingly powerful and unique. The changes that result may not always be clear-cut or obvious, but such experiences can be life-changing due to the often profound shifts in perspective they bring about. Investigating these alterations on a cognitive and psychological level can be a fascinating journey for those who have experienced them, allowing for further growth and enrichment through exploration. Yet combat, war, and trauma can also do something to the mind that makes this experience maddening, as the people often do not understand what has happened to them, which is the case for Uncle Steve and Henry, and even for the girl in “Slingshot,” who has no real understanding of the fact that her father is gone to the other side, even though his ashes remain. She waves hello—but really she is waving goodbye.The mystical experience of war, of combat, of death—these are the central points in all the characters’ stories, whether they are experienced indirectly as in “Slingshot” or directly as related by Marlantes. The displacement is real, just like it is for a saint converted by the crucifixion on Calvary. However, with regards to combat, it is not necessarily heaven that one sees as a result; sometimes it is only hell, as Marlantes explains, and whether the spirit of those traumatized by war crosses over to the other side to spend eternity in hell or to find peace in heaven is a question to which no one….....

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