From One Battlefield To Another

by QuentMiller

Upon reading Homer’s The Odyssey: Book 23, the reader is introduced to the struggles that surround a couple when a soldier returns home from war. One major themes that permeated Homer’s text was the lack of communication between the couple. This theme is supported in the work of Siobahn Fallon’s Tips for a Smooth Transition and Angela Ricketts’ radio interview “No Man’s War”, which goes to show how an ancient idea can last throughout time without any significant deviation into modern and contemporary times. Communication is a timeless problem, a problem that is unlikely to change for soldiers and their spouses in the near or far future.

In lines 264-65 of The Odyssey, Odysseus says to Penelope, “Strange lady! why dost thou now so urgently bid me/tell thee?” This quote shows the lack of communication between the Odysseus and Penelope, and how they are not quite on the same page as each other. Penelope is so eager to hear about Odysseus’ life and what he has been through the past 20 years while Odysseus just wants to enjoy being home and in his own bed for the time being. Odysseus is not quite ready to share his tales as yet, and this same concept is seen in Fallon’s Tips for a Smooth Transition. When Colin’s wife, Evie tells him that he can tell her anything, Colin replies, “don’t make me go back to Afghanistan.” This quote clearly shows that Colin is uncomfortable sharing his war experience with Evie. He does not want to relive all the things he has gone through or seen by sharing it with Evie. For both Odysseus and and Colin, their travels have been extremely traumatizing, to the point that it may not be wise to share it with their spouse, which creates a communication barrier in which the couples cannot speak to one another.

Angela Ricketts during her radio interview poses an alternative perspective on the problem. She says, “there was so much that we each had to tell each other that we didn’t know where to start, and we just didn’t tell each other very much.” She and her husband had a lot to share with each other, and wanted to share the information and have an open dialogue, however they had lost the ability to speak to each other. Their time away from one another made them forget how to communicate with one another, they did not know how to express themselves and got choked up with information and ended up not sharing at all. This double edged sword sheds light on the fact that the spouse left behind at home may have just as much to get off her chest as the returning soldier does.

A lack of communication between spouses is nearly one of the many other problems that returning soldiers and their spouses have to encounter and overcome. The soldiers are essentially leaving one battlefield, only to come home to another which is their assimilation back into society. They have to  relearn how to speak to their spouses and share with one another in order to ease the transition. In a way, the war at home is more difficult and foreign to a soldier than the war that they just escaped.