Rotten Symbol Mongering: Scapegoating in Post-9/11 American War Literature

A rhetorical approach to the fiction of war offers an appropriate vehicle by which one may encounter and interrogate such literature and the cultural metanarratives that exist therein. My project is a critical analysis—one that relies heavily upon Kenneth Burke’s dramatistic method and his concepts of scapegoating, the comic corrective, and hierarchical psychosis—of three war novels published in 2012 (The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers, FOBBIT by David Abrams, and Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain). This analysis assumes a rhetorical screen in order to subvert and redirect the grand narratives the United States perpetuates in art form whenever it goes to war. Kenneth Burke’s concept of ad bellum purificandum (the purification of war) sought to bridge the gap between war experience and the discourse that it creates in both art and criticism. My work extends that project. I examine the symbolic incongruity of convenient symbols that migrate from war to war (“Geronimo” was used as code for Osama bin Laden’s death during the S.E.A.L team raid; “Indian Country” stands for any dangerous land in Iraq; hajji is this generation’s epithet for the enemy other). Such an examination can weaken our cultural “symbol mongering,” to borrow a phrase from Walker Percy. These three books, examined according to Burke’s methodology, exhibit a wide range of approaches to the soldier’s tale. Notably, however, whether they refigure the grand narratives of modern culture or recast the common redemptive war narrative into more complex representations, this examination shows how one can grasp, contend, and transcend the metanarrative of the typical, redemptive war story.

Symbol for a Community: The Dickens Opera House and Theaters of the American West

This paper reveals the importance of the Dickens Opera House to the local history of Longmont, Colorado. Through an exploration of pioneer history and of architectural patronage and audience accommodation, this paper illustrates how the Dickens Opera House participated in the construction of cultural identity and civic aspirations of the city of Longmont. Using the Tabor Opera House of Leadville and Wright Opera House of Ouray as framing examples to place the Dickens Opera House within its proper architectural and historical context, I approach the building’s inception, construction, and early years as a way to track the early civic identity of a community through a work of architecture. The Dickens Opera House provided a point for the citizens of Longmont to focus their hopes of success and respectability in a newly formed community. An opera house provided a high-class perception of a town that provided a projection of respectability. Such a construction was built from various sources – the architecture of the building, simply calling the building an ‘opera house’, furnishings in the latest fashions and equipment of the latest technology, and extravagant scenery and curtains. In addition to these outward projections, opera houses also provided a place for community events. It was the location in town that brought people together.

Symbol signing design for older drivers.

Mode of access: Internet.

""Star of Life" - emergency medical care symbol: background, specifications, and criteria.

Mode of access: Internet.

Symbol signs 2. The development of passenger/pedestrian oriented symbols for use in transportation-related facilities. Final report.

Transportation Department, Research and Special Programs Administration, Washington, D.C.

Symbol and satire in the French Revolution,

Mode of access: Internet.

Motorists' comprehension of regulatory, warning, and symbol signs. Volume I: executive summary. Final report.

Federal Highway Administration, Washington, D.C.

Age effects on symbol sign recognition. Final report.

Federal Highway Administration, Washington, D.C.

Machine independent compilation of PL/I : pass 1 symbol manipulation /

Originally presented as the author's thesis (M.S.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1971.

Age effects on symbol sign recognition /

Mode of access: Internet.

The Covenanters in the North : or, Sketches of the rise and progress, north of the Grampians, of the great religious and social movement of which the Covenant of 1638 was the symbol /

Mode of access: Internet.

State of Connecticut by His Excellency John H. Trumbull governor a proclamation : The national standard of the United States came into being on June fourteenth, 1777 ... The anniversary of that occasion is a fitting day on which to do particular honor to this symbol of our national institutions. I therefore designate Monday, the fourteenth day of June next, as Flag Day ... Given under my hand and seal of the state at the Capitol, in Hartford, this second day of June ... one thousand nine hundred and twenty-six ...

Arms of the state of Connecticut printed at head and state seal printed at lower left.