{"title":"\"The Same Uniform with White Men\": Military Costume, African American War Experience, and Faulkner's Flags in the Dust","authors":"Steven Trout","doi":"10.1353/mss.2023.a921509","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The US Army uniform issued to Caspey Strother, an African American World War I veteran in William Faulkner's <i>Flags in the Dust</i>, is freighted with contested political meaning. This article shows how the novel works to undermine the connection between military attire and citizenship (in the case of Black soldiers) and illuminates an ironic subtextual kinship between Caspey and his creator. In addition, the article places Caspey's uniform within a larger pattern of references in the text to military material culture, a pattern that ultimately points to the incompatibility of the southern warrior ideal with the realities of armed conflict in the twentieth century.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":35190,"journal":{"name":"MISSISSIPPI QUARTERLY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1000,"publicationDate":"2024-03-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"MISSISSIPPI QUARTERLY","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mss.2023.a921509","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LITERARY THEORY & CRITICISM","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The US Army uniform issued to Caspey Strother, an African American World War I veteran in William Faulkner's Flags in the Dust, is freighted with contested political meaning. This article shows how the novel works to undermine the connection between military attire and citizenship (in the case of Black soldiers) and illuminates an ironic subtextual kinship between Caspey and his creator. In addition, the article places Caspey's uniform within a larger pattern of references in the text to military material culture, a pattern that ultimately points to the incompatibility of the southern warrior ideal with the realities of armed conflict in the twentieth century.
期刊介绍:
Founded in 1948, the Mississippi Quarterly is a refereed, scholarly journal dedicated to the life and culture of the American South, past and present. The journal is published quarterly by the College of Arts and Sciences of Mississippi State University.