ABSTRACT
War possesses a clarity denied to peace. A nation’s military goal overshadows lesser individual concerns, at least initially. Postwar peace enjoys no such overriding focus. In the absence of collective conflict, society reverts to its natural state of fragmentation by multiple interests. And where the war has reshaped its participants, peace will prove equally transformative. When those serving as soldiers return home, they will infuse into the domestic their newly acquired experiences, which are frequently alien to the mindset of the home front. Elaine Scarry observes that reality constitutes an “invented structure.” If valid, the experience of combat, in its transgression of cultural norms, exists outside the built-upon edifice of American domestic reality. Its presence represents the midnight knock at the door that threatens the newly awakened with the unknown. Initially, such disruption might be blamed on the nature of the returning soldier rather than on the nature of war.
