Soldier's Heart: Reading Literature Through Peace and War at West Point [Hardcover]

Elizabeth D. Samet (Author)

Book Description

Release date: October 16, 2007 | ISBN-10: 0374180636 | ISBN-13: 978-0374180638 | Edition: First Edition

Elizabeth D. Samet and her students learned to romanticize the army "from the stories of their fathers and from the movies." For Samet, it was the old World War II movies she used to watch on TV, while her students grew up on Braveheart and Saving Private Ryan. Unlike their teacher, however, these students, cadets at the United States Military Academy at West Point, have decided to turn make-believe into real life.

 

West Point is a world away from Yale, where Samet attended graduate school and where nothing sufficiently prepared her for teaching literature to young men and women who were training to fight a war. Intimate and poignant, Soldier's Heart chronicles the various tensions inherent in that life as well as the ways in which war has transformed Samet's relationship to literature. Fighting in Iraq, Samet's former students share what books and movies mean to them--the poetry of Wallace Stevens, the fiction of Virginia Woolf and J. M. Coetzee, the epics of Homer, or the films of James Cagney. Their letters in turn prompt Samet to wonder exactly what she owes to cadets in the classroom.

 

Samet arrived at West Point before September 11, 2001, and has seen the academy change dramatically. In Soldier's Heart, she reads this transformation through her own experiences and those of her students. Forcefully examining what it means to be a civilian teaching literature at a military academy, Samet also considers the role of women in the army, the dangerous tides of religious and political zeal roiling the country, the uses of the call to patriotism, and the cult of sacrifice she believes is currently paralyzing national debate. Ultimately, Samet offers an honest and original reflection on the relationship between art and life.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Azar Nafisi meets David Lipsky in this memoir/meditation on crossing the border between the civilian world of literature and the world of the military during 10 years of teaching English at West Point. Samet's students sometimes respond to literature in ways that trouble her, but she lauds their intellectual courage as they negotiate the multiple contradictions of military life. Considering the link between literature and war, Samet insightfully explores how Vietnam fiction changed American literary discourse about the heroism of military service. Beyond books, Samet also examines how televised accounts of the Iraq War have turned American civilians into war's insulated voyeurs, and discusses the gap separating her from the rest of the audience watching a documentary on Iraq. Lighter, gently humorous sections reveal Samet's feelings about army argot. She has been known to ask her mother to meet her at 1800 instead of at 6:00 p.m., but she forbids the use of the exclamation Hooah!(an affirmative expression of the warrior spirit) in her classroom. Samet is prone to digressions that break the flow of great stories, like an account of her West Point job interview. But this meditation on war, teaching and literature is sympathetic, shrewd and sometimes profound. (Oct.)
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From Bookmarks Magazine

"What’s the difference, ma’am? I’ll be in Iraq within a year anyway," contends a cadet in Elizabeth Samet’s English class. Soldier’s Heart responds by making a graceful, compelling case that reading forces her students to slow down and reflect on such timeless themes as courage, honor, and sacrifice, which results in better, more thoughtful soldiers. Part memoir, the book also examines her teaching career and shares her opinions of religion in the military and the war in Iraq. It is her sketches of students and colleagues that stand out, however, as she challenges stereotypes and provides a moving tribute to these proud, admirable men and women. By demonstrating that reading has an important place in the military, she makes a strong case for its value in civilian life as well.
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; First Edition edition (October 16, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374180636
• ISBN-13: 978-0374180638
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 6.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #946,355 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

74 of 75 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An Exceptional Book October 25, 2007

By Richard B. Schwartz TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Elizabeth Samet is a civilian professor of English at West Point. The increase in the number of civilians teaching there was one of the innovations of Fletcher Lamkin, during his term as the WP dean of the academic board. When I taught there, as a reserve officer, in 1967-9 there was only one civilian instructor in English, a woman who taught the plastic arts. Dr. Samet is a Yale Ph.D. and her (to some, curious) career choice of a position at West Point is one of the many stories which constitute this book.

She is able to accomplish several things here. She provides a vivid sense of the WP ethos, along with the `newer' ethos which includes women cadets, civilian professors, majors, minors, and a rich array of electives. She provides sketches and portraits of a number of her students and a number of her military colleagues. She reports on their communications with her as they move on in their careers, to and from war zones and, for some, to civilian life. The book is a mini-memoir and mini-autobiography. Most of all it is a long reflection on the relationship between literature and life, literature and the military, literature and war.

What is most impressive about the book is the fact that it is so accessible. Its materials are complex but they are presented in a manner that is instructive, moving and compelling. This is a book for everyone interested in literature, for everyone interested in soldiers and for everyone interested in West Point. I recommend it highly.

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Short book with a big impact November 19, 2007

By David Hale

Format:Hardcover

A few weeks ago this author was on my local NPR station and I was intrigued by the idea of her book and then I got out of my car and walked into a book store and there it was on the new arrivals pile. I'm not sure if I would have noticed it if not for the story on the radio but I'm glad I did. As a former Army officer who has dealt with some of the issues in this book I was pulled in by her stories of teaching at West Point, an institution I did not attend but have visited and those visits made her descriptions that much more palpable. This book will be a jumping off point to explore more of the references the author describes. I rarely find books that I can't put down but this was one of them.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars "Books Are Weapons" December 8, 2008

By Sam Sattler TOP 1000 REVIEWER

Format:Paperback

English professor Elizabeth Samet arrived at West Point with a perspective much different than that of her students. At West Point, she is a minority in more ways than one: civilian, female and, one has to suspect, politically much more liberal than the vast majority of her students.

Samet, with a Harvard BA, a PhD in English literature from Yale, and no military experience, is perhaps an unlikely candidate to be a West Point instructor. But for the past ten years that is exactly what she has been - teaching the "literature of war" to students likely to experience the real thing for themselves soon after leaving the academy. In the process, Samet offers her students the opportunity to consider the moral and ethical nuances of the profession for which they are so rigorously preparing themselves. Theirs is a world of contradictions, and Samet strives to show them how a study of the great literature of the past can help them function effectively in that world.

In "Soldier's Heart", Samet sets out to prove that the way that the military regards itself is largely a reflection of the way it has been represented in literature. But as she sees it, despite the fact that the military embraces that image, its leadership still largely distrusts literature and those who enjoy it as a pastime, fearing that they are not as masculine as warriors need to be for the good of themselves and their country. Needless to say, Samet does not agree and finds, to the contrary, that her students learn much about themselves through an "unflinching look at both the romance and the reality" of the profession they have chosen. She helps make her point by quoting C.S. Lewis: "We read to know we are not alone."

Samet knows how important books are to soldiers trapped in what must seem to be a never-ending war. Her own father still remembers many of the USO-distributed titles he read during the Second World War and she notes that those paperbacks reminded soldiers that "books are weapons" to be read and passed on to others. As she sees it, books can be weapons in a variety of ways: "against boredom and loneliness, obviously; against fear and sorrow; but also against the more elusive evils of certitude and dogmatism."

She recalls that one of her former students, while serving in Iraq, read at a much faster rate than when he returned to the United States. He found that while in Iraq anything that challenged or stimulated his mind made time go by much quicker than it would otherwise have for him. But back home, far from the conflicts of war, he found that his reading had lost its sense of urgency. He still enjoyed reading at his slower pace, and he still loved books, but "he was no longer reading for his life."

"Soldier's Heart" makes a strong case that soldiers who study "the literature of war" are better prepared for combat than those who do not, that they go into the stresses of combat with a more refined sense of themselves and the morality of warfare, an important skill and a strength that will serve our young officers, and those they lead, well.