Friendly Fire the Literature of War in Bloomington, MN

The term "friendly fire" was coined in the 1970s but the theme appears in literature from ancient times to the present. It begins the narrative in Aeschylus's
Persians
and Larry Heinemann's
Paco's Story
. It marks the turning point in Homer's
Iliad
, Virgil's
Aeneid
, the
Chanson de Roland
, Stephen Crane's
The Red Badge of Courage
and Tim O'Brien's
Going After Cacciato
. It is the subject of transformative disclosure in Jaan Kross's
Czar's Madman
, Ron Kovic's
Born on the Fourth of July
, O'Brien's
In the Lake of the Woods
and A.B. Yehoshua's
Friendly Fire
. In some stories, events propel the characters into a friendly-fire catastrophe, as in Thomas Taylor's
A Piece of this Country
and Oliver Stone's 1986 film
Platoon
. This study examines friendly fire in a broad range of literary contexts.