{"id":55861,"date":"2021-07-14T06:00:21","date_gmt":"2021-07-14T10:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=55861"},"modified":"2021-07-14T07:43:09","modified_gmt":"2021-07-14T11:43:09","slug":"c-s-foresters-novels-of-vocation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2021\/07\/c-s-foresters-novels-of-vocation\/","title":{"rendered":"C. S. Forester’s Novels of Vocation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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As a literature professor, much of my reading involved preparing to teach my classes or to stay up with my discipline.\u00a0 So some years ago, I resolved to make a point of also reading for pleasure, so as to remind myself why I got into this profession in the first place.<\/p>\n

My problem is that, as a literature professor, my standards are high, so the pleasure reading has to be really well-written.\u00a0 The\u00a0Aubrey\/Maturin<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0series by Patrick O\u2019Brian met my criteria, and after reading all of those wonderful seafaring novels, I craved more.\u00a0 So I turned to the 10-book\u00a0Hornblower saga<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0by\u00a0C. S. Forester<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0 In many ways, I liked these novels even better than O\u2019Brian\u2019s, with their moody, introverted hero, full of self-doubts while always succeeding brilliantly, their exciting action scenes, and their twisty plots.<\/p>\n

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Forester was also the author of\u00a0The Good Shepherd<\/strong><\/a>, a WWII tale of a destroyer captain whose job is to shepherd merchant ships across the Atlantic and to battle the German submarines that are trying to sink them.\u00a0 The novel has a special interest for many readers of this blog because its central character is one of the few fully-realized Lutherans in English literature, and that Lutheranism is developed in detail and sympathetically portrayed.<\/p>\n

In the midst of his tension-filled mission and outbreaks of combat, Commander George Krause prays, reads his Bible, and employs Luther\u2019s devotions.\u00a0 As we go inside his mind and point of view, we find that Scripture verses are always popping up in his head, and that he is constantly struggling with the sense of his sinfulness and his limits over against his faith.\u00a0 (Luther called this kind of\u00a0 spiritual trial\u00a0Anfechtungen<\/strong><\/a>.)<\/p>\n

I appreciate my fellow Patheos blogger Chris Gehrz for reminding me of this novel in his post\u00a0The Good Shepherd<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0 He discusses the recent movie version of Forester\u2019s novel,\u00a0The Greyhound<\/em>, starring Tom Hanks.\u00a0 I don\u2019t have Apple TV+, where it\u2019s streaming, so I haven\u2019t seen the movie.\u00a0 So I\u2019m grateful to Prof. Gehrz for his comparison of the movie with the book and for his thoughtful analysis of both of them.<\/p>\n

As one might expect, the movie tones down the religious focus of the book, but the Lutheranism is still there.\u00a0 Commander Krause (his name changed to Ernie, for some reason), prays\u00a0Luther\u2019s morning and evening prayers\u00a0<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0and says grace before his meals, which are always interrupted.\u00a0 There is a bit about a picture of Jesus he has in his quarters.\u00a0 But, as Prof. Gehrz says, that\u2019s nothing compared to what we find in the novel, as he illustrates.<\/p>\n

One detail that he cites especially stands out to me.\u00a0 In the movie, Commander Krause stops his pursuit of a German U-boat in order to pick up survivors of an earlier attack.\u00a0 But in the novel, he does not!\u00a0 The movie evidently interprets Commander Krause\u2019s faith in terms of conventional Christian piety and good works.\u00a0 But the destroyer captain has apparently read Luther\u2019s treatise\u00a0Whether Soldiers Too Can Be Saved<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0 Serving in the military is indeed, says Luther, a legitimate calling from God, a sphere in which a Christian can love and serve his neighbor, even when that requires fighting and killing.<\/p>\n

That made me realize that the larger theme in\u00a0The Good Shepherd<\/em>\u00a0is vocation.\u00a0 Through all of the difficult choices Commander Krause has to make, in all of his struggles, his bravery, and his heroism, he is committed to doing his duty.\u00a0 He would have learned to do that in the\u00a0Small Catechism<\/em>, which teaches about vocation in its\u00a0Table of Duties<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

This, in turn, made me realize that the Hornblower saga is also about vocation!\u00a0 The ten novels follow the entire career of Horatio Hornblower during the Napoleonic wars, from being a young Midshipman, to his rise in rank to Lieutenant, to commanding his first vessel, to becoming a captain, then a captain of ever-bigger ships, then a commodore in charge of multiple ships, then an admiral, and finally to retirement, in which he has his most remarkable encounter with his enemy.\u00a0 At every stage, he has to figure out how to fulfill his new office, overcomes obstacles, and gains new understandings of what it means to do his duty.<\/p>\n

Most striking is what we see in\u00a0Mr. Midshipman Hornblower<\/strong><\/a>, in which Horatio is an inexperienced teenager suddenly elevated to the authority of an officer in the Royal Navy, the lowest rung, to be sure, but he finds himself in charge of rough and rowdy adult sailors, having to command those in his charge, which entails winning them over to his leadership.\u00a0 As he does so, and as he endures being bullied by his fellow midshipmen and engages in combat, we see Horatio developing a crucial quality for the military vocations, a sense of honor.<\/p>\n

A good collection to show the development of this sense of vocation is the\u00a0Young Hornblower Omnibus<\/strong><\/a>, which includes the first three novels in the series:\u00a0\u00a0Mr. Midshipman Hornblower<\/em>,\u00a0Lieutenant Hornblower<\/em>, and\u00a0Hornblower and the Hotspur<\/em> (his first command).\u00a0 Later Hornblower books have some non-explicit adultery\u2013which is also about vocation, since he is sorely tempted but determines to hold to his marriage\u2013and other adult-level material, but these early books strike me as appropriate for teenagers, especially teen-aged boys, who will relate to them and will love them.\u00a0 And so will anyone who wants to read for pleasure, while also learning something, even beyond how to sail a frigate.<\/p>\n

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