Barry Hannah Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Ruth D. Weston

SOURCE: "Debunking the Unitary Self and Story in the War Stories of Barry Hannah," in The Southern Literary Journal, Vol. XXVII, No. 2, Spring, 1995, pp. 96-106.

In the following essay, which was first presented in an abbreviated form at the South Central Modern Language Association conference in October 1994, Weston examines themes of war, heroism, honor, and shame in Hannah's short stories about the American Civil War and the Vietnam War.

In a new book on storytellers of the Vietnam generation. [Out of the Sixties: Storytelling and the Vietnam Generation, 1993], David Wyatt argues that literary generations are defined by, among other things, "the impact of a traumatic historical incident or episode … [which] creates the sense of a rupture in time and gathers those who confront it into a shared sense of ordeal." Whether they, their friends, or someone in their families were the actual combatants, the writers...
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