WHEN YOU’VE BEGUN TO THINK LIKE A GUN: Review of Jonathan Shay’s Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character. Yeah, I promised this a million years ago. You get it now.

This book is an unexpected combination: more than half literary study of the Iliad, more than half attentive, personal description of traumatized Vietnam veterans, from the perspective of a psychiatrist who worked with many of them. It is 100% compelling on both grounds. I will talk first, and quickly, about why you need to read this. I will try to be very brief about its major and minor flaws, but really, the key thing is that this is one of the few necessary books.

AIV does a close reading of the Iliad to reveal what we know about Achilles’ character prior to the Trojan War, and the specific betrayals that transformed him from an honorable warrior into a berserker. It then maps Homer onto the testimony of Vietnam veterans. The book honors specificity: We get a lot of the veterans’ own words, a lot of careful description of which features of their combat experience would be similar to or different from combat experience in other wars (both Homeric and modern). It describes the contemporary soldier’s dependence on others, his immersion in an undefined battlefield where seemingly harmless objects can be traps and weapons, his experience of fate or luck and of dehumanization of the enemy.

So, you need to read it. Its flaws are two, and neither are in any way central to its argument: First, it takes the story of combat trauma and berserker rage as the only story of war. This only comes out briefly, though. Second, there’s a chapter dedicated to tracing the roots of dehumanization of the enemy to the Bible (and the roots of American involvement in Vietnam to the Catholic Church–this is a fairly hideous irony, the way some people’s pain matters in this chapter and others’ does not–you could easily read this chapter and come away thinking no one ever fled Communist Vietnam due to religious persecution, there were no refugee camps, etc). This chapter just does not work on any level. Shay is able to write about religious belief and doubt with empathy–there’s a compelling passage about the image of the Pieta, before the lousy chapter focusing on religion. So it’s even more irksome that his main chapter on religion is so awful. A few very brief thoughts (condensed from a long rant, which I’m sparing you): 1. There are far fewer direct quotes from his patients, actual veterans, in this chapter. It’s a lot more him and a lot less them.
2. If you’ve read about religious rhetoric in the Civil War, or (say) read The Song of Roland, you will easily suss what’s wrong with this chapter.
3. Blaming dehumanization on Christianity absolves actual racism, yo! The Vietnamese just become generic furriners, Philistines, with no attention whatsoever to the specific history of racism in the West.
4. Guy didn’t even pick the most hardcore Biblical passages to fight. David and Goliath? Whatever, dude, read the Book of Joshua….
5. Christianity is not Judaism. It isn’t not-Judaism, either; but you can’t write about Christianity and its relationship to enemies! and pretend the New Testament never happened.
(pant, pant)

OK, so my only substantive problem with his discussion of dehumanization (as vs. the annoying anti-Christian digression) is that I’d like more evidence that it isn’t optimistic. Shay provides, I think, excellent evidence that dehumanizing enemy soldiers is ultimately demoralizing and traumatizing for soldiers. He does less well demonstrating that dehumanizing “enemy” women is similarly harmful for soldiers. I would really like to be able to say, “If you rape Iraqi women you will be much more likely to come home broken on the inside.” But I don’t think Shay closes that case.

Overall: This is an immensely important book. It’s also very easy to read. Very plain-spoken and clear. It’s compassionate, its literary judgment is acute–really what more do you need to know? You should read it. (ps: I learned about this book–and John Keegan’s Mask of Command–from Minisinoo.)