Having the Last Word: World War I Fictions as Counter-Narratives

Abstract

The twentieth century had been the theatre of large-scale catastrophes, most notably during World Wars I and II. When disaster comes out of the realm of fantasy and becomes the stock of history, the implications for a collective consciousness are many and far-reaching. First, for those who have first-hand experience of the event the issue is how to bear witness — how could words adequately describe something that reaches so far out and against common experience? Second, those who did not experience the events, but who are witness to their catastrophic impacts on others, remain with a feeling of threat from unknown terrors that could at any point reach their doorstep. The effort of trying to understand the nature and cause of the events collides in a web of narratives, counter-narratives, myths, scientific and pseudo-scientific explanations, and contradictory political analyses. At the centre of everything is the reality of those who suffered, and whose version of events has particular weight within the cloud of competing discourses. Hence, the narration of the experienced acquires major significance; it is the only one that really counts.