Enemies of Honor: Heroes and Prisoners of War in Richard Flanagan’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Tom Keneally’s Shame and the Captives

The heroism of the Australian soldier abroad is a subject often explored by Australian writers. Representations have fluctuated somewhat from the time of the First World War, but tales of valor and stoic endurance have elicited a potent fascination from this time. Among many examples is Frederic Manning's The Middle Parts of Fortune (1929), throughout which, despite the hardships and privations of the Western Front and the various enticements to accept commissions elsewhere, the protagonist prefers the lot of the everyday soldiers, among whom heroism is "a common thing" (94). The serving men are presented not as types but as individuals, but each is secure in the conviction that "one must not break" (13). The tradition continues in A. B. Facey's memoir of Gallipoli, A Fortunate Life (1981), in which "despite the fear men mostly took everything that was thrown at them" (260) and bonded together in "love and trust" (278), and more recently in Christopher Koch's Highways to a War (1995), which tells of a combat cameraman who joins the struggle against the Khmer Rouge. Mike Langford is athletic and charming, he is preoccupied with "the outcast and the vulnerable" (159), and he saves many lives ultimately at the cost of his own. He is portrayed indisputably as a "hero" (342). Clare Rhoden argues that Australian war literature "diverges from its international counterparts chiefly, but not solely, because most Australian accounts use a classical heroic tradition that others have abandoned for a disillusioned style of narration." Similarly, Robin Gerster notes that Australian writers are "critical of war but almost blindly impressed by warlike achievements" (257). However, there has long been a definitive thread of dissent interwoven into the heroic tradition, in which Martin Boyd's When Blackbirds Sing (1962) is one of the most notable examples. In Boyd's novel, Dominic Langton feels "a common humanity" with the German soldiers he is required to destroy (75). He sees "suicidal futility" where others perceive a glorious defense of civilization (114). Similarly, David Malouf s Fly Away Peter (1982) describes senseless carnage in another country's war. Like Langton, however, Jim Saddler sees the Germans as individuals, as "something more than the enemy" (80).Interestingly, as a different stratum of novels demonstrates, there also exists a nexus between war and peace that encapsulates the prisoner of war. This nexus is explored at length in Richard Flanagan's The Narrow Road to the Deep North (2013) and Tom Keneally's Shame and the Captives (2013). While not opposing the virtues of traditional heroism and its accompanying camaraderie, both Flanagan and Keneally apply a critical eye to its manifestations. Similarly, the concept of brotherhood across opposing trenches, examined by Boyd and Malouf, is present but skewed as enforced proximity causes the concept of a heroic national identity to become entangled with the search for a common humanity. Instead, Australian heroism is shown to be a composite and fluid concept. Across disunited soldierly communities in stasis, not only is heroism a capacity continually to endure hardship while retaining a sense of integrity, but it is also manifest as a capacity to acknowledge and bear various burdens of guilt and shame, often resulting in a greater wisdom. Selflessness and a capacity to form profound attachments to other people are also dominant. This form of heroism is necessarily distinct from what might form in the heat of battle, and though such heroes do not lack physical courage, they often adopt a pacifist stance.This article examines Flanagan's and Keneally's representations of this new species of heroism both as the latest development in representations on the subject and in the more specific context of relations with the Japanese whose imprisonment of Australian soldiers and whose incarceration by Australian soldiers during the Second World War gave rise to many of the manifestations of heroism detailed by these authors. …