Prelude

I am going to prelude this paper with the preface that I think this book is incredibly

relevant and could help civilians understand the struggles of veterans and I would readily

recommend it to others, however, I also deeply hate this book because of its unerringly accurate

depiction my personal struggles as a veteran, and the complicated emotional toll it took on me to

analyze it. These two conflicting ideas have invariably skewed my interpretation of the story and

made objectivity nearly impossible. So, much like the story, this paper will have an unreliable

narrator.

The Stones Cry Out

War acts as the indirect conflict of The Stones Cry Out and its shadow continues to cause

issues long after the fighting has stopped. Through nightmares, flashbacks, acquired habits, and

memory in general, the villain of war is a constant adversary which affects not only the survivor

of the war itself, but also those around him. The unreliable nature of the story play into this idea

that war, even after it has ended, can be the driving force behind conflict. Just as many civilians

believe they understand, either the conflict itself or the struggles of those returning from it, they

lack a fundamental understanding which precludes them being able to establish a discernably

true conclusion.

This unreliability also plays of the social norm of not discussing the struggles of veterans

in a meaningful way. While many people will readily admit that veterans have problems

stemming from war and address the need to support them, they also have some reason for not

talking about those issues openly. Our society has erroneously established the idea that it is taboo

to openly discuss a veteran’s experience or that by default no veteran wants to discuss war.

These misconceptions, while often perpetrated by well-intentioned civilians further stigmatize

those who already view their experiences as alienating and further the divide between those

suffering and those seeking understanding. Thus, the story’s ambiguousness shows the

disconnect between the sufferer and the onlookers who seek understanding.

The seemingly nonsequential order of the story helps depict the idea that the past is not

just the past. To Manase, and many other with haunting memories, the past is also the present. It

undermines every event, it penetrates every aspect of one’s life, and it cannot be avoided. Thus,

the reader is plagued by the same ever-present dread and haunting memories as Manase.

The captain and the lance corporal represent two different aspects of what haunt Manase.

Like many veterans, Manase is not only haunted by the effects of war, by which I mean, the

events that happened to or around him, but also the changes in one’s self caused by actions or

inactions to the effects of war. It is not just the effect of the death of a comrade, but the failure to

save them which whether logical or not is viewed as a personal failure. It is not just the effect of

killing of an enemy, it is what you must become to kill them that makes you hateful towards

them. It is not just the effect of many people dying around you, it is that you survived by random

chance rather than merit or logical reason that makes you feel guilty or undeserving. The lance

corporal is the effect of war, a horror to be witnessed, while the captain’s order is the haunting

action one is ordered or forced to take, even if Manase was just an onlooker to the horrors, he is

at a minimum complacent in them.

Manase’s geology habit is a means in which he can prolong his coping with the lance

corporal’s death. His continuation of the habit and interest is in an illogical way keeping the

lance corporal alive and preventing the need to address what followed the conversation which

sparked said interest. Manase cannot prevent the memories of war from intruding into his life but

by collecting stones he can try to force which memories surface and avoid the worst of them.
 Manase does not effectively reacclimate to civilian life which negatively impacts his wife

and children and degrades his family life. However, this destruction does not indicate that he is a

poor husband or father, just that the adversity he faces is overwhelming. Even in the scene with

the rope, Manase originally intends to help his wife but the darkness that haunts him skews the

attempt and leads him to both homicidality and suicidality in the vain hope of some type of

lasting peace.

The connections and similarities between Manase’s wartime experience and the death of

his son are abundant. I believe this similarity is not because Manase killed his son but because he

believes his participation in the killing of the lance corporal is connected to it. Many veterans

believe they are destined to be punished or suffer for their actions in war and often make

connections where none exist. This connection is furthered by the accusations that he murdered

his son which he believes his former actions did ultimately or karmatically cause. In a personal

example, when my father died unexpectedly, I blamed myself because of a skewed connection

between taking someone else’s father from them and being denied one myself. This irrational

connection of events is why Manase is seemingly implicated in his son’s death, because he is

seeking to blame himself while knowing logically, he is not responsible.

The mystical dream with which the story ends, is an example of reframing the narrative, a

method used to move past traumatic experiences. He addresses the memories which haunt him

and reconstruct them in a mystical fashion to prevent dishonoring the man he killed but still retell

the story to himself with the changes needed to allow him to find some semblance of peace. This

reframing allows Manase to accept that his killing of the lance corporal was not evil but mercy.

The previous depictions of the lance corporal indicate that he likely would have died

horribly and by reframing what he originally viewed as murder into the mystical attempt to save
him but ultimately failing helps him see the horror of his past as a more humane act. This

mystical narrative mirrors the narrative of the entire book. Instead of carrying the lance corporal,

he carried his passion for geology and passed it on through his writing. This marks the end of

Manase’s heroic journey, in which he is reborn in his ability to move past the nightmares and

find some form of peace with his past. Thus, Manase is better than he was before, his pseudo-

peace is represented by the ordinary stone becoming a radiant crystal, reflecting the ordinary

peace one feels with oneself being a prize Manase has spent a lifetime to find as he struggled to

accept the past.