Carthage explores the psychological trauma of a post-war American nation

By Aneeqa Wattoo

IN war, there are no innocent victims, Sartre quoted Jules Romains in his essay, Existentialism and Humanism. Romainss quote opens up a question that lies at the heart of Joyce Carol Oatess new novel, Carthage: are there absolute victims in any war? And furthermore, is any sort of redemption truly possible for anyone who believes he has committed a crime?

Set in Carthage, a small city in New England, where the novels protagonists, the Mayfield family live, the novel opens with a search group that includes 53-year-old Zeno searching for his 19-year-old daughter, Cressida, who has gone missing. Soon, Zenos family learns that Cressida was last seen in the company of Brett Kincaid, Carthages celebrated Iraqi war veteran. For the family, this information is baffling; Brett is also the former fiance of Juliet, Cressidas sister. In the sheer horror of the ensuing days, Cressidas family is confronted by a range of unanswered questions: why was the quiet, deeply introverted Cressida meeting with Brett at all? Also, was Brett involved in her disappearance? This is something the police considers when they arrest him the following day.

Oates does not provide the reader with easy explanations. Instead, she leaves them with an instinctual desire for clarity and answers in a novel that often shifts its narrative voice, relaying the ex-perience of each member of the Mayfield family after the disappearance, separately in first person. Through these accounts, the reader slowly begins to identify the cracks in the ostensibly perfect family life of the Mayfields. Zenos relationship with his wife, Arlette for example, slowly disintegrates as the trauma of losing a child allows Arlette to disengage from her marriage and start a separate, more independent life without the protective aura of Zenos subtly dominating personality.

Cressidas relationship with her sister, too as the novel shifts into the past is revealed to be marked by a deep and abiding resentment. The generally praised Juliet, who is lauded by her par-ents and their friends as the pretty one is the object of Cressidas resentment, and part of her desire for escape from her life at Carthage. However, her envy and the love-hate dynamic between the sisters, as portrayed in the novel, seem to be neither very surprising nor original (it brings to mind the highly popularised novel, My Sisters Keeper by Jodi Picoult). Oates descriptions of Juliet as the pretty sister and Cressida as the smart one, in addition, appears reductive, and forces the reader to neglect the individual complexity of each character by setting up the clichd dichotomy of beauty vs. brains as the standard with which they are to be viewed.

More interesting is Bretts character and how his experience of the war in Iraq affects his relationship with Juliet. In the scenes dealing with him, Oates seems to be at her best as she tackles what seems to be a central concern of the novel: the effect of the USs war on terror on the lives of average Americans. It is deeply telling for example, that in an imaginary letter to Brett, Juliet writes: Very few people in Carthage know the difference if there is a difference between Iraq and Afghanistan. I know: for I am your fiance and it is necessary for me to know.

Revelations such as these hint at the wide disparity between the perceptions and concerns of American civilians, and the national rhetoric of a country waging a prolonged international war. This is perhaps also why when Brett returns from the Iraqi Freedom Operation, deeply traumatised, his face disfigured and his body disabled, Juliet is unable to understand Bretts new, nihilistic stance towards life. As he says: its a toss of the dice. Who gives a shit who lives, who dies.

The reader realises that for Brett the faade of patriotic zeal and loyalty has completely fallen apart. Yet, on a larger level, his drastic transformation from a young, friendly boy to an embittered war hero a hero who often displays an affinity for violence appears to be a metaphor for the invisible, deeply psychological changes that a collective American nation has undergone.

Over the course of the novel, the reader finds herself asking: in a life filled with such insecurity and fear, a life in which the freedom of the individual is constantly restricted by the larger communitys imperative, what is the right way to live life? To give yourself up, as Brett does, for national duty and to be shattered physically and emotionally in the process? To live cocooned in a secure and comforting family life as the Mayfields did before Cressidas disappearance? Or, to run away, to vanish, as Cressida did, escaping both her family and the oppressive, intrusive community she felt suffocated by.

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