“We Have to Do the Things They Tell Us” – Nation, Masculinity and War

National propaganda in all of its forms, from official speeches to fictional narratives, gains importance at times of crisis when more subtle means of control, such as state-enforced laws, become insufficient vehicles of surveillance. Particularly during the Second World War, cultivating a collective British identity and sense of belonging became vital conditions for warding off the threat coming from continental Europe. Benedict Anderson in Imagined Communities argues that the myth of the Unknown Soldier plays a central role in the construction of national identity and in assimilating men into a nationalistic discourse when turning them into soldiers. The novels discussed here negotiate and challenge this myth by depicting male characters which refuse to lay down their life for the nation. Whilst Adam Fitzroy’s Make Do and Mend (2012) questions the authenticity of the People’s War by dramatising the long standing tension between Wales and England (thus plunging into a debate on Britishness versus Englishness), Sarah Waters’ The Night Watch (2006) illustrates institutionalised nationalism in form of prison routine and the inmates’ disobedience to claim the war as their war. “We have to do the things they tell us” (481) is one of the characters’ weary recognition moments before he commits suicide to escape serving in a People’s War that is, in reality, led by “a load of government men[...]” (481). Mary Renault’s protagonist Laurie Odell is similarly disillusioned in The Charioteer (1953). His conflict with his stepfather and clergyman Mr. Straike demonstrates the church to be an institution of nationalistic convictions. Finally, Walter Baxter’s Look Down in Mercy (1951) demonstrates the struggles of a heteronormatively conditioned officer, who becomes aware of his feelings for another