Exploring the Function of Rapid Truthing in Phil Klay's Redeployment
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2017
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Haverford College. Department of English
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Thesis
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eng
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Abstract
My thesis examines the ways in which Phil Klay’s Redeployment circumvents direct description of trauma and instead participates in “rapid-truthing.” Through a close reading of three of his stories, I examine how rapid-truthing functions through the inclusion of humor—most specifically gallows humor, narrative silence, and lack of closure. The stories are “After Action Report,” “War Stories,” and “Frago” and, in each, I interrogate a small handful of scenes to demonstrate his incorporation of rapid-truthing through these three narrative tools. I argue that Klay’s collection as a whole is a form of rapid-truthing in and of itself in addition to the rapid-truthing functioning within each of his stories; he must capture eight years worth of emotion in less than three hundred pages. In these three hundred pages, I argue that Klay’s decision to write about the War in Iraq through twelve distinct voices demonstrates that the experience of war is not individualistic, while simultaneously demonstrating that trauma is inherently plural.