Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1996. [Vol. 3.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 23)

STUDIES - M. Thomas Inge: Sam Watkins and the Fictionality of Fact

The entire book is given a literary framework from the start. Watkins begins the narrative with what amounts to a fable about the war which posits both the absurdity of it and his own balanced view of the outcome. He tells of a time when one William L. Yancy began to promote the "strange and peculiar notion that the sun rose in the east and set in the west, and that the compass pointed north and south." Many people who believed that "the United States of America had no north, no south, no east, no west" argued against this notion, including the Puritans, "Horrors" Greely, and Charles Sumner, and soon all the people were "fighting and gouging" over the argument. The two sides elected Jeff Davis and Abe Lincoln captains and fell to fighting. "Abe's side got the best of the argument," and now "the sun rises over the hills and sets over the mountains, the compass just points up and down, and we can laugh now at the absurd notion of there being a north and a south." Instead, now "we are one and undivided" (W, 8—10). The irony of the conclusion is clear

—Watkins believes that it will take more than a war to eradicate regionalism in the United States —, but by reducing the conflict to a neighborhood scrap, he also undercuts any justification for the thousands of lives lost in the struggle. He appears to side too with those who argued that the war was basically a conflict between two economic systems, one agricultural and the other industrial, over the fate of the nation. That he was fighting to preserve slavery never seems to have crossed his mind. The second framing device is to envision the war as a circus. The title page calls his account "A Side Show to the Big Show," an image that is returned to in the conclusion: "The curtain is rung down, the foot-lights are put out, the audience has all left and gone home, the seats are vacant, and the cold walls are silent" (W, 233). Thus the pomp and circumstance of battle, the posturings and assertions of patriotism amount to no more than the antics of the clown and the tumblings of the acrobat in a stage show at the circus. Both the opening fable and this sustained metaphor work effectively to establish an attitude and point of view for both the narrator and the reader. 51