English or German? We’re all human.

melaniegin
For three hours, the theatre was a church, sacred, solemn, and a steeple for contemplation. We’ve heard that war divides, that soldiers fear battle, know in our hearts that humans fear death. But here on the Warhorse stage these simple truths were laid bare, blurring the line between the theatre as art and as an honest discourse on humanity and politics. We saw Germans, French, and British – unable to communicate verbally – bound by fears about dying on the battlefield and never returning home to loved ones. We saw a French mother and an English one, in different spans of time, worrying about their children and trying to shelter them. We saw brothers, always fighting, unite over worry for their sons at war. It seemed to remind us of truths more important than the color of one’s uniform or one’s nationality, and motivated questions on the necessity of war. 

No less important was the idea that love knows no boundaries. At the beginning, we meet Albert, a young country boy from Devon, and his beloved horse, Joey. From the beginning, we are almost intruders on their quiet intimacy as we watch the two mature together. Joey grows from a foal to a full-sized riding horse, shown beautifully in the play’s transitions, and Albert becomes a temperamental teenager, loyal only to Joey. When World War I breaks out, Albert and Joey are separated. Albert, only sixteen, is forced to remain home, and Joey is sold to the British cavalry and shipped to France. Separated by distance but not emotion, Albert soon chases after Joey, joining the British infantry in the process. 

The play’s artistry motivates our reflection on war. Crows accurately circle dead bodies, horses and men – their shadows haunting on the walls – fall with unflinchingly regularity. As the horses tire, we watch their bodies whittle to skeletons, eventually being shot out of misery. Near the end of the play, when Topthorn the horse dies, the three men controlling his limbs slowly edge away. It as if his spirit  is leaving, and offers both an artistic and symbolic understanding of war’s tragedy. 

In another ending scene, Joey is caught on barbed wire in No-Man’s Land, and two soldiers – one German and one English – spot him simultaneously. Their synchronized appeals to their commanders, their eventual approaches to the horse, and how they both entangle Joey from the wire are not-so-subtle reminders of their shared humanity. To watch the determination of Joey’s ownership (by the simple coin flip) was almost sacred. Here was a testament to human commonality, to mutual desire to shield the horse from harm, to the pointlessness of fighting. 

When Joey is finally reunited with Albert – through a harrowing ordeal when we wonder if Joey will be shot – we have subdued joy. For although their story ends relatively happily, we must also reflect on the scores of lives lost in the battles that came before. And thus Warhorse concludes, abruptly and suddenly, like a war screeching to a halt. 

The audience stood, some still wiping tears from their eyes, and shuffled out of this makeshift temple. I stood for a moment, still awed by the beauty, the honesty just shown in front of me. Before I left, I closed my eyes, and I – like the characters at war’s end – gave thanks to be alive. 
English or German? We’re all human.

17 thoughts on “English or German? We’re all human.”

  1. Unknown's avatar HF says:

    Suffering is unavoidable, and you contribute to it and support it. Everything you touch, see, and own is the result of an endless cycle of exploitation of labor, war, differing beliefs, and the pursuit of wealth. You are a part of this cycle and you are on the side that benefits. You aren’t the kid making soccer balls in India or clothes in the Philippines, you’re the one using them. As an economics major at UCLA, you’re learning how to efficiently make money for others (corporations eventually i’d assume), and thus yourself so that you’ll never end up on the losing side. I’m also sure that there are plenty of people that you wouldn’t want to see in power and running your life and you would welcome people who would fight on this country’s behalf to make sure that doesn’t happen. You can’t say that war, suffering and fighting are pointless when much of what you enjoy was the result of them. Do I fault you for living your life the way you do? No. It’s just the way it is, they’re just the cards you were dealt. I just was looking at the bigger picture here and you either accept the way things are or you don’t If you don’t, do something about it. If you don’t do anything about it, then you accept the way things are.

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  2. Melanie Gin's avatar Melanie Gin says:

    Thank you for the thoughtful comments. My post was in response to the depiction of trench warfare in WWI, a period of 2-3 years of offensives that left both the Allied and German forces with severe casualties. In this situation, war did seem unnecessary — people and horses were dying constantly with nothing to show for it.

    But there are two questions that you bring up that I’d like to address. First, are there things worth fighting for? Yes, of course. If some crazy dictator was to declare war on the United States or to attack our soil, war would be inevitable and necessary to protect life as we know it. There are an infinite number of examples on this point, and I will not get into all of them. Thus, I concede that in the case that an aggressor takes preliminary steps to hurting the United States, we must defend ourselves and fight back.

    The second question I see is related to the tradition of exploitation and violence the United States has undertaken against other societies. Yes, by outsourcing our factories and employing our armies we have gained significant advantages, advantages I have accepted with little thought simply by partaking in American capitalism. In this case, is exploitation necessary to keep American transaction and luxury? Maybe so, and perhaps I gloss over this point too much in the post.
     
    The statement “war is unnecessary” supposes that war is unnecessary in all cases: economic and political, both for the aggressor and for the attacked. But can we ever get to that point? You say no. I would have to agree, and conclude that the post is chiefly an idealistic look at warfare after a touching play.

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