Smithsonian American Art Museum
Coming Home in 1945: Reading Robert Frost and Norman Rockwell
Author(s): Alexander Nemerov, Robert Frost, Norman Rockwell
Source: American Art, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Summer, 2004), pp. 58-79
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Smithsonian American Art Museum
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4099059
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Coming
Home
in
1945
ReadingRobertFrostand NormanRockwell
Alexander Nemerov
ManyAmericanartists,writers,andfilm-
Norman Rockwell,Homecoming
GI, 1945. Oil, 28 x 22 in. Private
collection ? CurtisPublishing
Co. Photo courtesyof American
IllustratorsGallery
makers portrayed enlisted men returning
at the end of World War II. Their imagery was sometimes downbeat even
amid the celebrations. The prosthetic
hands of Homer Parrish, played by actual
veteran Harold Russell in William
Wyler's 1946 film The Best Yearsof Our
Lives, stand out, for example, as icons of
the war's lasting physical and psychological effects. It is surprising, however, to
see how this gloom and trauma permeate
the work of two unlikely figures: Robert
Frost and Norman Rockwell.
Frost (1874-1963), the poet of
Vermont themes, did his best to avoid
writing about the war, but his great
poem "Directive," about a somber return
home, is powerfully linked to 1945, the
time in which it was written. Rockwell
(1894-1978) made several ostensibly
happy pictures of veterans that same year,
but the first of these works, Homecoming
GI (frontispiece), turns out to be so dark
and unsettled that the artist had to spend
the subsequent months devising how to
calm down-to settle into patriotic contentment-its more poignant, even morbid, energies. Frost and Rockwell, both
Vermont residents (Rockwell lived in
Arlington, Frost in Ripton), did not
know one another, and their aesthetic
aims were not the same: Rockwell
59 AmericanArt O 2004 SmithsonianInstitution
paintedpropagandaand Frostdid his
best to steerclearof propagandistic
themes. But "Directive"and Homecoming
GI sharea similartheme. Like the filmmakerFrankCapraand the illustrator
N. C. Wyeth, the photographerTodd
Webb and the poet RandallJarrell,Frost
and Rockwelleloquentlydepictedthe
sadnessand uncertaintyat war'send.
"Directive"and the War
Frostwrote "Directive"when he was seventy-one, and he publishedit in book
form in SteepleBush(1947), his eighth
volume of poetry(seepage60 for the full
poem). On the surfacethe poem little
concernsthe war:it is about a journey
back to the ruins of a Vermontsettlement in the woods. A guide exhortsthe
readerto follow him to this place in the
poem'sfamousopening line, "Backout
of all this now too much for us,"and
then takesus everdeeperthroughdesertedreaches,past signs of abandonment and dilapidation.The surrounding
forestgrowsat once quieterand more
restiveas the journeycontinues,until we
reacha forgottenhome of which only a
few remnantssurvive-a smatteringof
brokenthings and other desolatetraces.
Otherwisethereis nothing, no way to be
At?
e.|
'Ile
?
i
?
"Directive"by Robert Frost
Back out of all this now too much for us,
Back in a time made simple by the loss
Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off
Like graveyardmarble sculpture in the weather,
There is a house that is no more a house
Upon a farm that is no more a farm
And in a town that is no more a town.
The road there, if you'll let a guide direct you
Who only has at heart your getting lost,
May seem as if it should have been a quarryGreat monolithic knees the former town
Long since gave up pretence of keeping covered.
And there's a story in a book about it:
Besides the wear of iron wagon wheels
The ledges show lines ruled southeast northwest,
The chisel work of an enormous Glacier
That braced his feet against the Arctic Pole.
You must not mind a certain coolness from him
Still said to haunt this side of Panther Mountain.
Nor need you mind the serial ordeal
Of being watched from forty cellar holes
As if by eye pairs out of forty firkins.
As for the woods' excitement over you
That sends light rustle rushes to their leaves,
Charge that to upstart inexperience.
Where were they all not twenty years ago?
They think too much of having shaded out
A few old pecker-fretted apple trees.
Make yourself up a cheering song of how
Someone's road home from work this once was,
Who may be just ahead of you on foot
Or creaking with a buggy load of grain.
The height of the adventure is the height
Of country where two village cultures faded
Into each other. Both of them are lost.
And if you're lost enough to find yourself
By now, pull in your ladder road behind you
And put a sign up CLOSED to all but me.
Then make yourself at home. The only field
Now left's no bigger than a harness gall.
First there's the children'shouse of make believe,
Some shattered dishes underneath a pine,
The playthings in the playhouse of the children.
Weep for what little things could make them glad.
Then for the house that is no more a house,
But only a belilaced cellar hole,
Now slowly closing like a dent in dough.
This was no playhouse but a house in earnest.
Your destination and your destiny's
A brook that was the water of the house,
Cold as a spring as yet so near its source,
Too lofty and original to rage.
(We know the valley streams that when aroused
Will leave their tatters hung on barb and thorn.)
I have kept hidden in the instep arch
Of an old cedar at the waterside
A broken drinking goblet like the Grail
Under a spell so the wrong ones can't find it,
So can'tget saved, as Saint Mark says they mustn't.
(I stole the goblet from the children'splayhouse.)
Here are your waters and your watering place.
Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.
savedamid the bleakness,until we come
upon the brook and the guide speaksthe
final lines: "Hereareyour watersand
your wateringplace./ Drink and be
whole againbeyondconfusion."Echoing
Walden-that other tale of a saving
returnto watersand a wateringplace"Directive"is anotherstory of New
England.The senseof a specificlocation
in Frost'spoem is strongenough that
literatureprofessorJohn Elderrecently
analyzed"Directive"at book length,
using the poem as a touchstonefor
60
Summer2004
understanding the environmental and
human history of central Vermont.'
Yet Frost'spoem turns out to resonate
strongly, even deliberately, with the end
of World War II. "Directive" was first
published on the title page of the winter
1946 edition of the Virginia Quarterly
Review (fig. 1). This publication was not,
as we might expect, a journal of the arts.
Instead, it was largely devoted to political
affairs. The issue in which "Directive"
appearedcontains articles called "Conflicts
in the Arab East," "Change in France,"
THEVIRGINIA
QARTERLY
REVIEW
Volume
Numlper I
WIN'rmll
In*'i
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9
RobertFrost,"Directive,"
Virginia QuarterlyReview 22
1
(Winter
S oerviea 1946):
(Washingctone,D..
2
Pschologyfor the Returning
Serviceman (Washington, D.C.:
National Research Council, 1945)
and "Russiaand the West."Opening that
journalin Januaryor Februaryof 1946,
the readercould not have missed the
poem'scontemporaryrelevance-indeed
that relevancewas made explicitby poet
and editorsfor all to see. "Backout of all
this now too much for us":to readsuch
a firstline on a firstpage in early 1946
could only have broughtto mind the
too much"of the previousfew years
and even the previousfew months-the
world war,the Holocaust,the atomic
destructionof Hiroshimaand Nagasaki.2
The war permeatesother lines. The
poem'simagesof destruction-of a time
"madesimple by the loss/ Of detail,
burned,dissolved,and brokenoff"; of
"ahouse that is no more a house"and "a
town that is no more a town"-read like
referencesto recentcatastrophes.So do
the "shattereddishes underneatha pine,/
The playthingsin the playhouseof the
children."The violent valleystreamsthat
leave "theirtattershung on barband
thorn"is an almostWorldWarI-style
image of rippedflesh and fabric.The
words "burned,dissolved,and broken
off" even have an atomic ring. Several
poems in SteepleBush,assembledin a
last section called "Editorials,"explicitly
concernthe atomic bomb, including
"BurstingRapture,""U.S. 1946 King's
X," and "The BrokenDrought,"with its
lines "Earthwould soon/ Be uninhabitable
as the moon."The steeplebush on the
book'scover-a type of plant common
in New England-rises abovea solitary
farmhousein plumes of floweringpod,
an unintentionalbut fitting acknowledgment of that other form of vegetalescalation looming in everyone'sconsciousness
in 1946-47 and present in Frost's own
pages: the mushroom cloud. "Directive"
is not one of Frost's "Editorials," but the
salve of Thoreauvian waters at poem's
end is meant to save us from a current
confusion.
Frost'spoem is most ruefully about the
war, however, in its story of returning to
a home that is permanently changed-"a
61
AmericanArt
house that is no more a house." The
issue of soldiers' homecoming was everywhere when he published "Directive."
Psychologyfor the Returning Serviceman
(fig. 2), like other books addressed to
veterans, noted that coming home for
these servicemen was like coming to a
place they had never encountered. "Be
prepared for the shock," counseled the
authors, "you [will be] a stranger in your
own home . . . Home may even seem
to you like another foreign land you've
never seen . . . Main Street in the old
home town or the traffic on Broadway
will look just about as strange for a while
as the rutted winding roads and blasted
buildings of Europe, or the jungle trails
and native towns of the Pacific."3
In "Directive," too, home is not the
same-home in fact does not exist, except for a few shards. And the way back
is a worn and abandoned road, grooved
with iron wheel tracks, as unfamiliar
as the "rutted winding roads" overseas.
When the Virginia QuarterlyReview ran
an essay about one of the new veteran
sAs
'!
133]i111
V.
."......~4
'+
on
:::!•
WATR
JORA
.... ..UIN
on.
BOOKS
books in the same issue in which
"Directive"
appeared,the pairingmade
sense.The authorof that book, Charles
Boltd,who had lost a leg fightingalongside the Britishat El Alamein,attendeda
Frostseminarat Dartmouthafterreturning fromthe warand becamean acquaintanceof the poet's."Directive"is not
sociology,and the veterans'manualsare
not alwayspoetic, but the editorialcontent of eachoverlapped.4
HomecomingGI and the Loss of Home
The most iconic WorldWarII imageof
the soldier'sstrangereturnis Rockwell's
HomecomingGI (frontispieceand fig. 3).
The painting,firstpublishedas the cover
of the May 26, 1945, SaturdayEvening
Postless than threeweeksafterV-E Day,
looks initiallylike the antidoteto the
darklingattitudesof Frostand the serviceman'smanuals.The solitaryGI is
aboutto be set on by all mannerof family and friends.He is so exuberantlywelcomed that even the launderedshirton
the line, armsoutstretched,reachesto
embracehim. His sweethearthides beside
the makeshiftcarpentryat left, ready
(maybe)to build somethingthat lasts.
The apron-cladmotherwelcomesher son
home with outflungarms,and to a meal
no less.The kid brother,flying down
the stairs,his body a crazy-flungset of
diagonalsemulatingthe wooden repairwork abovehim, is overjoyedto see his
older sibling.Other relativesand neighbors-all smiling,all looking, all glad to
see this one homecomingman-burst
from the wood- and brickwork.In these
ways the painting appears to match the
patriotic imagery Rockwell had memorably created throughout the war, notably
The Four Freedomsand the "Willie Gillis"
pictures chronicling the adventures of a
fictitious, happy-go-lucky serviceman.
Yet Homecoming GI turns out to be as
attuned to the awkwardness of coming
home as "Directive"and the veterans'
62
Summer 2004
books. Its antic atmosphere is not the
whole story. The sadness of Rockwell's
painting-missed when we see him only
as the homespun painter of happy sentiments-is that the veteran has returned,
glum and changed, to the place where he
grew up. Rockwell keeps the soldier at a
poignant distance when he might easily
have shown a moment of familial embrace, separating him from his loved ones
at the moment of reunion. "It may be
new to you but it is an old story that men
back from fighting feel estranged from
family and old friends,"counsels Psychology
for the ReturningServiceman.5
More than that, Rockwell shows the
veteran cut off, in a Frost-like way, from
childhood itself. The GI's home and the
home next door are crawling, climbing,
bursting, and flying with children. The
energy of the kids is buoyant. The little
brother racing down the steps is suspended in midair in a Peter Pan leap of
perpetual childhood-his development
arrested in a state of pure joy. The soldier,
though, is motionless. The composition
presses him down: Rockwell makes a vertical chute or funnel out of the drainpipe
and tree above him, channeling our eye
from the stripe-shirted boy at the treetop
down to the soldier in a way that seems
to weigh on the veteran'sslack shoulders.
His heavy bag and large army boots emphasize his downward, burdened posture,
contrasting sharply with the tiptoe angle
of the girl's shoes and the upward energies
above him. The soldier is also positioned
at a lower point than any other figure in
the painting. His world, unlike theirs, is
that of the sloping dirt yard.6
Like the children above him, the veteran is still just a boy. His frame is thin,
his feet gangly. He has returned to his
childhood home and not to a home of his
own-back to a mother and not a wife.
"A notable feature of the Second World
War is the youth of most who fought it,"
writes the literary historian and World
War II veteran Paul Fussell, noting that
the minimum age of conscription for
3
Norman Rockwell,Homecoming
GI (detail), 1945. Oil, 28 x 22 in.
Privatecollection? CurtisPublishing Co.
American troops went from twenty-one to
eighteenby 1945. But Rockwellwantsus
to see that his soldieris a permanently
changedboy. He has come backto the
placewherehe was a kid, but he has suffereda fatefuldisenchantment.As the
youngerbrotherof one veteranput it
manyyearslater,"Whenhe camehome I
expectedhim to be joyfuland happyand
successful,and he was sad;he was hurt.
Things had changed."A Canadiansoldier
was even clearerwhen he describedwhat
it was like to be greetedby cheeryaid
workersas he returnedfrom fighting:
"Theygaveus a little bag and it [had]a
coupleof chocolatebarsin it and a comic
63
AmericanArt
book.... We had gone overseasnot much
more than childrenbut we werecoming
back,sure,let'sfaceit, as killers.And they
werestill treatingus as children.Candy
and comic books."In Rockwell'spainting,
the veteranis treatedas the homecoming
boy,but the worldfor him lacks,and
maybewill alwayslack, the child'sglorious
playfulness."Somethinghas gone out of
him that once gavezest to the old life,"
notesWillardWallerin TheVeteranComes
Back(1944), "andthereis nothing to take
its place."7
Rockwell'sveteranalso lacksa face.
Alone in a paintingthat showsa great
manyfaces-that cramsmultiplefaces
into windowsand doorwaysand shows
anotherone peepingoverthe fence at
right-the veteranhas no features.This
is all the more strikingconsideringthat
Rockwellwas a celebratedpainterof
faces-rendering them into caricatured
smiles,frowns,grimaces,and assorted
othermemorableexpressions-and that
he was nevermorea facepainterthan
duringthe war,when he coined the
"WillieGillis"character.(The Gillis
Heritage,madefor a 1944 Saturday
EveningPostcover,includesthe facesof
Gillisand five soldierancestors.)But the
veteranin HomecomingGI turnsaway.He
is different,changed,not himself.Like
Frost'straveler,he is lost, though perhaps
not lost enoughto find himself,at least
just yet.
The morewe look, too, the more we
see that Rockwell'spaintingsharesqualities with other downbeathomecomings
of that era.The roof-repairingcarpenter,
intentionallyor not, is an incisivepiece
of socialcommentaryakin to that found
in Hollywood's affecting portrayals of the
serviceman'sreturn. Rockwell's carpenter
is visually matched with the GI, perhaps
his brother. Each wears a uniform, including a hat and boots; each is positioned in relation to the central vertical
structure of the porch, the laborer at the
top of the left post, the soldier at the bottom of the right post; and the carpenter
looks over his shoulder and down at the
veteran, solidifying their connection. The
links suggest that the exalted soldier's return home will lead to a job such as this
one. The only elevation the soldier can
expect to gain after the war is to be raised
to this man's honest but menial and precarious position, kneeling even when uplifted. The veteran Bolte described his
fellow soldiers' worries: "'What happens
to me when I get out?. . . Do I get a
job?' . . . They're afraid veterans will be
selling apples again."8 In The Best Yearsof
Our Lives, B-17 bombardier Fred Derry
(Dana Andrews) returns home only to
find work as a department-store clerk and
as a soda jerk. Rockwell's painting alludes
to these demeaning transitions.
Capra and Rockwell
HomecomingGI helps us see uneasy
in otherunlikelyimages
homecomings
from those years.Near the end of Frank
Capra's1946 film It'sa WonderfulLife,
George Bailey, played by Jimmy Stewart,
wanders through the streets of his hometown after a guardian angel has granted
his wish that he had never been born
(fig. 4). Bailey, therefore, moves through
a space that is familiar and yet strange-a
place that used to be called "Bedford
Falls"but is now "Pottersville"-a place
he returns to as, in effect, a foreigner in
his own land. In the movie, this odd return is all about making George Bailey
feel grateful for what he does have, and in
the end he is restored to his original identity and his hometown is restored to
Bedford Falls. But the scene showing
Bailey as the lonesome stationary figure
coming back to his transformed homean image so close to Rockwell's-allows
us to see a powerful and hitherto unnoticed meaning to Capra'sfilm.
George Bailey never went to war. It
was his brother, Harry, who became a
flying ace. It was the taxi-driver Ernie
who parachuted into France, another
64
Summer 2004
character named Marty who helped take
the bridge at Remagen, and the police
officer Bert who also fought overseas, all
while George remained at home with one
deaf ear, classified 4F, serving as an airraid warden. But in another sense George
may be the greatest and most hyperbolic
of all Hollywood's returning veterans, the
more powerful for being unconsciously
represented as such.
As he wanders through his hometown
on the night of December 24, 1945, he is
a strange and unknown man-even to his
wife and mother. "This is George Bailey.
Don't you know me?" he pleads to
passersby.And he finds that the whole
town has been transformed, with new
shop windows, new stores, and a new
name. His old home at 320 Sycamore
Street is a ruin. Bedraggled, unkempt,
manic, Bailey even duplicates the edginess
that returning veterans were said to feel.
"Almost every man comes out of combat
keyed up, restless and tense," notes
Psychologyfor the Returning Serviceman.9
When all is restored-when George comes
to himself again and his younger brother
Harry returns from the war, dressed in
full military uniform, all wings and
medals and smiles-the joviality feels
like a penance for the film's unforgettable, almost scandalous portrayal of the
disturbed soldier coming back to an
indifferent and even hostile hometown.
Says George, "Something terrible'shappened to me."
HomecomingGI helps us to see Capra's
film better-George Bailey standing alone
is like Rockwell's soldier. At the same
time, the Pottersvillesequence in It'sa
Wonderfdul
Lfe illuminates a crucial but
unmentioned aspect of Rockwell's painting. There is an eeriness, even a deathliness, to Bailey'snighttime stroll through
his old hometown. As his guardian angel,
Clarence, tells him, "Youdon't exist ....
You'renobody. You have no identity. There
is no George Bailey."Movies made during
and after the war sometimes featured the
ghost of a killed soldier returning home,
4
George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) surveys Pottersville in Frank Capra's
It's a WonderfulLife (Liberty Films,
1946). Photo courtesy of Wesleyan
Cinema Archives, Middletown,
Connecticut
lik
41h"
and somethinglike this idea is on view in
He gets
Bailey'sunnoticedwanderings.io0
the chance,as Clarencesays,"tosee what
the worldwould be like withoutyou."
Evenas he strollsthe streets,he is somehow not there.
Rockwell'spainting,anxiousas it is,
would seem to be not quite that dark.
His people, afterall, recognizethe
returningsoldier.They welcomehim
warmly,whereasthe mean-spiritedcrowds
of honky-tonkPottersvilledo not really
notice Baileyuntil he presseshimself on
them (and even then, of course,he is a
stranger).But in a curiousway Rockwell's
figuresalso do not notice the returning
man. The sight lines of the porch-bound
people oddly do not focus on the soldier.
If one follows their paths of vision-that
65
AmericanArt
of the mother, for example-the eyes
oddly converge on various points behind
him, almost as if some other figure or
some other scene, not visible in the canvas, attracts their attention. The soldier is
like an absent bystander to their excitement even as he is the cause of it. Standing
there immobile and passive, he suggests a
person not quite livingly observing a world
in which he is powerless to participate.
Rockwell's painting, in a Capra-like
way, has the quality of a nonexistent or
even dead man's return to see how the
living are getting on without him, or of
a dead man imagining what a homecoming might be like had he survived.
Love and adulation are there in Rockwell's
work, exactly as in a classic fantasy of
self-importance, except these emotions
/
L
L- I >
ELCOMEi
H E.,. ;
ED?!MEE
5
ToddWebb, 8th Street,New York
Home GIJoe), 1945.
(Welcome
Silvergelatinprint. EvansGallery,
Portland,Maine
6
ToddWebb,3rdAvenue,New
York(Welcome
Home Gerald),
1945. Silvergelatinprint. Evans
Gallery,Portland,Maine
7
Todd Webb,3rdAvenue,New
York(Welcome
HomeLeo), 1945.
Silvergelatinprint. EvansGallery,
Portland,Maine
are directednot quite at the soldierbut
somehow beyond him. The disjunctions
in Rockwell'spaintingsuggestthat this is
what a homecomingwould have been
like had the soldiernot died, that this is
the joy people would have felt had he actually returned.Like Capra'sGeorge
Baileywanderingthroughthe "dreamland"of Pottersville(signaledin the neon
sign abovehim), Rockwell'sfacelessGI is
a "nobody,"with "noidentity,"curiously
absentfrom the scene in which he stars.
Dark Doors and Empty Roads
Rockwelland Caprawere not alone in
treatingthis death-in-lifetheme at war's
end. A look at the work of two more
artistsemphasizesthe morbidityof
HomecomingGI. Todd Webb, a photographerwho servedin the navy in the
South Pacific,beganhis WelcomeHome
Series(figs. 5, 6, 7) immediatelyafter
66
Summer 2004
SI,
moving to New Yorkin November 1945.
Though praisedat the time by critic
BeaumontNewhall for their "warmthof
appreciation,"Webb'sphotographsare
cold. His homecomingentryways,as historianWilliam Graebnerpoints out, are
blackholes, blankspacesof foreboding
and uncertainty.The transitionback into
domesticityis to be "feared,resisted,and
deflected."11The suggestionof triumphal
archesis ironic, the absenceand emptiness disquieting.
Webb, like Rockwelland Capra,combines homecomingand grief. He gives
the doorwayin 3rd Avenue,New York
(fig. 6) the feeling of a home shuttered
in mourning.The laurel-wreathsign
seems as much commemorativeof
Geraldas welcoming, as much a banner
of recollectionas of rejoicing.In another
of the pictures(fig. 7), the twin pilasters
seem like the architectureof the tomb.
Coming home, in Webb'sphotographs,
is to experiencea living memorialization.
8
N. C. Wyeth, Soldier'sReturn,
1944. Charcoal on paper, 50 1/8
x 38 1 in. Brandywine River
Museum, Chadds Ford,
Pennsylvania, Bequest of
Carolyn Wyeth
N. C. Wyeth, in his large drawing entitled Soldier'sReturn (fig. 8), also made a
picture about death-in-life near war's
end-one that employs the same rhetoric
Rockwell used in Homecoming GI. The
scene, like Rockwell's, is ostensibly
happy. The lone soldier has come back to
the family farm. His dog races to greet
him, as in Rockwell's picture. The soldier
has dropped his bag, unlike Rockwell's
weighted figure, releasing his wartime
67
AmericanArt
burden at the threshold of the farm so
that he can accept with open arms the
life he used to know. The property is in
perfect shape. This farm is still very
much a farm, unlike the one in Frost's
poem. But the image imparts a subtle
sense of disquiet. Where are all the people
on this immaculate but deserted property? What about the prominence of
the faceless man's long shadow? What
about Wyeth's strange reworking, in this
ostensibly joyous picture, of his most
macabre image-Blind Pew from
TreasureIsland terrifyingly feeling his way
down a country road? Soldier'sReturn is a
large and somewhat loosely rendered
charcoal drawing, too, and not a crisply
delineated painting, and the sketchier
medium adds an aura of ephemerality to
the scene, as if all we see were not quite
real but more of a fantasy.
In this dreamy and slightly eerie atmosphere, Wyeth's drawing recalls the
most famously macabre story of a soldier's
homecoming in American literature,
Ambrose Bierce's celebrated tale "An
Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" (1891).
Bierce's Civil War story is so notorious
and powerful that it was bound to
achieve some resuscitation, conscious or
otherwise, at the end of World War II.
The tale concerns a Confederate prisoner, a noose around his neck, about to
be hung from a bridge, who miraculously
escapes, diving into the waters below. He
swims through volleys of gunfire and
makes his way for home. The journey is
difficult. Ever more weary-"fatigued,
footsore, famishing," as Bierce writesbut spurred on by thoughts "of his wife
and children," he at last finds a road
that leads him "in what he knew to be
the right direction. It was as wide and
straight as a city street, yet it seemed untraveled." He then finds himself standing
"at the gate of his own home. All is as
he left it, and all bright and beautiful in
the morning sunshine. He must have
traveled the entire night. As he pushes
open the gate and passes up the wide
white walk, he sees a flutter of female
garments; his wife, looking fresh and
cool and sweet, steps down from the
veranda to meet him." The soldier
"springsforward with extended arms."
Just then, "as he is about to clasp [his
wife] he feels a stunning blow upon the
back of his neck; a blinding white light
blazes about him with a sound like the
shock of a cannon," and the prisoner is
dead, hung by the neck, never having
68
Summer 2004
left the bridge. His escape, his return
home, was a fantasy.12Wyeth's picture
has some of this same quality. It, too,
imparts the sense of the soldier's coming
home as somehow coincident with his
death, as though its true subject were
not the soldier's return so much as his
fantasy, like that of Bierce's prisoner, of
such a homecoming, for so he too is
poised, arms outstretched, at the threshold of a gate, on a wide road, at the verge
of home, in brilliant sunlight, and in an
ephemeral atmosphere like that of a
dream. Though Wyeth likely never read
Bierce's much-earlier story, picture and
tale show the veteran's return in the
same ghostly way. As in Webb's photographs, Capra'sfilm, and Rockwell's
Homecoming GI, the moment of passing
back into home territory is strangely
synonymous with the transition from
life to death.
Homecoming Marine
Rockwell tried a different take on
homecoming-uneasy but finally more
benign-in his second veteran picture
of 1945 (fig. 9). Homecoming Marine,
the V-J Day pendant to Homecoming GI,
appeared on the cover of the Saturday
Evening Post for October 13, 1945,
almost five months after the first image,
and in most respects it reads as a solution
to the downbeat energies of the earlier
picture. In this painting, Rockwell's propagandistic messages are more firmly,
though not completely, under control.
HomecomingMarine shows the marine
at left center-a handsome young man,
cap at a jaunty angle, his hands gripping
a captured Japanese battle flag. The veteran has come back to the garagein which
he used to work. At upper right we see
the front page of a newspaper bearing
the soldier's likeness and the headline
"Garageman a Hero," with a smaller
likeness to the right, surmounting the
blue serviceman's star. Around the
9
Norman Rockwell,Homecoming
Marine, 1945. Oil,
46 x 42 in. Privatecollection? CurtisPublishing
Co. Photo courtesyof AmericanIllustratorsGallery
M AKING
HOMIE
WORK
PLANS
No. 3 IN
A SERIES
SERIES
ONA
10 Making Home Town Plans Work:
Veteran'sReportNo. 3 (New York:
Crowell-Collier Publishers, 1946)
ON AID
TOWN
TO VETERANS
homecoming marine are six figures: two
mechanics at the garage, at upper left
and center; two children (posed for by
Rockwell's sons Jerry and Peter); a portly
municipal worker; and an elderly man
who leans avidly inward, all ears, to mark
the rapt attentiveness of the group. The
marine's lips are slightly parted. He is
telling a story, we can guess, of some
battle in the South Pacific, perhaps of
how he captured the flag.
70
Summer 2004
The soldier is now more assimilated
than the lone private of Homecoming GI.
Rockwell huddles his cast of characters
into a persuasive semblance of community, drawing on a centuries-old way
of showing groups bound together by
common values, ties of sentiment and
sympathy.13Though each retains the
sense of having been a studio model
posing separately from the others, the
seven figures combine into a believably
cohesive group. Even as he stands out,
the veteran is clearly part of this community-a situation different from
Homecoming GI. The scale is more
heroic than in the earlier painting,
too, with the figures now filling the
picture space.
Even the marine's discomfort shows
that Rockwell is in command. The veteran'sposture suggests that he is ill at
ease, perhaps unnerved by the scrutiny of
his admirers. His body is angled back, a
bit to the left-the line of his left arm
decisively marking this orientation. He
leans slightly away from most of his listeners as if somewhat taken aback by all the
attention. But his discomfort is mild compared with that shown by other enlisted
men in similar images from the time.
The cover of a 1946 pamphlet entitled
Making Home TownPlans Work(fig. 10),
for example, shows an uneasy sergeant
sharing a cup of tea with the town elders.
They surround the veteran to hear his
stories perhaps but also to ask, more urgently, what he is going to do with his
life now that the war is over. The contrast between the veteran's demure clasp
of the teacup and the assertive stance of
the older man to the right, his shiny
loafer poised insinuatingly atop a box,
indicates who has the power in the civilian world. The veteran, having fulfilled
his military duty, must now face another
set of expectations. Not the least of these,
in light of the photographer's implicit
presence at the scene, is the burden of
having to look like, to be, a typical veteran, whatever that might be.
11 Frank Scherschel, Welcome-Home
Party, published in Life 19
(December 3, 1945): 31
In anotherof these images,Frank
Scherschel'sLifemagazinephotograph
from December 1945, the adoringaudience pressesin on the veteran(fig. 11).
Backfrom the air force, he sits shrinkingly in the parloras everyone-including a pictureof the familydog-looks on
in statesof expectantnervousness.As in
MakingHome TownPlans Work-and the
71
American Art
excruciatingliving-roomscene in Best
Yearsof OurLivesin which Homer
Parrishfailsto claspa glassof lemonade
in his prosthetichands-the transitionto
civilianlife is anxious.The veteran'swellwisherscreatea tribunalof happiness.
Rockwellcertainlymakeshis marine
sharethis type of discomfort.The claustrophobicspace in his painting, the
atmosphereas of an almost too-expectant
attentionvergingon interrogation,points
to the difficultiesof assimilation.But he
also softensand ennoblesthe uneasiness.
His marine,unlike the haplessair force
veteranof Scherschel'sphotograph,is a
hero grippingthe gaudy token of conquest. He is also assuredof the same
job he had beforehe enlisted:his mechanic'scoveralls,markedwith his name,
"Joe,"hang on the wall next to his press
clippings.Aboveall, he is grantedthe
figurativesoft-landingof a returnto the
all-malespaceof the garage,a sufficiently
masculinevenue from which upholstery,
teacups,and other unnervingsigns of
feminizeddelicacyhave been expunged.
Backhome from the war,he is still
a man.
He is still a boy, too. Rockwellsolves
the problemof innocencelost that informsthe firstpaintingby showinghere
that no such loss takesplace.Soldierand
youngestboy sit next to one another.
Insteadof being split apartand rendered
into opposites,boy and man rub shoulders,seatedon the samecratein similar
postures.The boy, insteadof being simply
glad at the veteran'sreturn,is now activelyemulatinghim, conforminghis
pose to the soldier's,lookingup to him.
The soldierkeepsin touch with youth,
evenfor all the carnagehe must haveseen.
Rockwell'sgreatemblemfor this
changethat is reallyno changeat allthis sleightof hand by which something
smallerbecomessomethinglargerwithout everreallyaltering-is the veteran's
doubledlikenesseson the wall. These
identicalimages,one larger,one smaller,
repeatthe play of largeand little, big kid
and small kid, at lower left. The painting
overall shows the ages of man, from
childhood to old age, and Rockwell arrays the marine opposite the municipal
worker to imply the veteran'seventual
transition from svelte hero to portly civilian. But he also lets us see that for now
the soldier is still a boy, his innocence
improbably intact.
72
Summer 2004
And in this picture Rockwell lets the
veteran speak. Many veterans of World
War II or of any conflict understandably
remain silent, or at most reticent, about
the horrors they have witnessed. Even
memoirs, such as Robert Kotlowitz's recent Before Their Time, often tell their
tales belatedly, with a grudging vividness.
During the war, one soldier'swordlessness
was memorably described by Ernie Pyle,
the most skillful of American combat
correspondents: "He reached down and
took the captain'shand, and he sat there
for a full five minutes holding the dead
hand in his own and looking intently into
the dead face. And he never uttered a
sound all the time he sat there."14In
Homecoming GI, too, the lone veteran
stands dumbfounded, and there is no
special indication that he will be able or
willing to explain what has befallen him.
But Rockwell's marine improbably makes
the slaughter of the South Pacific a fit
subject for little boys to hear.
HomecomingMarine, for all that, cannot eliminate all darkness, all anxiety.
The rhetoric Rockwell chooses to employ
is still more unwieldy, less straightforward, than he might wish. An imagery of
violence haunts the scene. The Japanese
flag, bright red, the painting's most conspicuous object, implies that vanquishing
the enemy is synonymous with a red
flowing from one's hands-that heroism
is linked with bloodshed. The soldier
holds this flag abashedly, as if unsure
what to do with this emblem of carnage.
His reticence is not just that of the reluctant hero but of the man nervously fingering the cardinal fact of his difference
from other men. "None of the home
folks have seen a friend's body blasted or
his blood spilled," says Psychologyfor the
Returning Serviceman.15Rockwell's painting of the same year subtly says as much.
The flag intimates death in another
part of the picture. Its limp cascade of
fabric matches Joe's coveralls hanging
on the wall. The resulting visual dialogue
is ostensibly happy. Divided from one
12 Louis Le Nain, Adorationof the
ca. 1640. Oil, 43 x
Shepherds,
54 in. The National Gallery,
London
anotherby the diagonalmetal crankjust
to the right of the marine,they createa
would-be optimisticheraldry:vanquished
and victor,war and peace.As the enemy's
flag sinks, the tokens of civilianemployment hang high. Yet the provocative
correlationof the two hangingfabrics
(each the same size) invites us to read
them as kindredsigns of hollownessand
emptiness.The work clothes, like the
flag whose form they resemble,hang as
an emblem of defeatand even death.
As much as they happilyindicatethe inevitabilityof his return,they readas the
saggingcipherof "Joe"-a starkacknowledgment that he might neverhave come
back to fill them; or that, even though he
has come back, the personwho wore that
set of clothes is forevermissing.
There are other disturbingsigns.The
hook at upperleft, a typicalpiece of machineryin a garage,is vaguelyominous
amid the icons of patrioticheroism.So is
the silvermetal objectat lowerleft. Overlapping the flesh of the smallestboy, it
echoes the bulb of his left knee and repeats the orientationof his left leg, mimicking its form like a brace.Whatever
73
AmericanArt
Rockwell'sintentions, the proximityof
metal and flesh-the one prosthetically
substitutingfor the other-is appropriate
for the year 1945.
These grimmerindications,however,
Marine.
arejust whispersin Homecoming
The doubts that drovethe earlierpainting have been mostly suppressedin the
laterwork. Blood becomesthe heraldry
of war;instrumentsof pain and debility
metamorphoseinto the harmlessarcana
of a peacetimegarage,requiringinterpretation to be renderedbackinto their
darkerconnotations.The grimnessremains
in this pictureonly as a murmur;its
louder sounds are of flags and headlines
and patrioticawe-Rockwell'saccustomed
metier.
Nowhereis this control more apparent
than in Rockwell'ssourcesfor a picture
of this type. The art historianKaralAnn
Marling,noting the scene'smystical
hush, comparesHomecomingMarine
with religiousthemes such as the young
Jesusdiscoursingamong the Elders.
The garage,she notes, is "asacredspace,"
with "eachobject . . . solemnizedby the
artist'smeticulousattentionto it.'"16Old
masterimagesof the Adorationof the
Shepherds,such as one by Louis Le Nain
(fig. 12), also match the picture'sreverential atmosphere.Rockwell,fond of acknowledginghis indebtednessto the
historyof art, faced a challengewith
this homecomingtheme-namely, how
to show a gatheringof figuresstaring
worshipfullyat one pivotal and all-butsaintlybeing-for which Adoration
scenesmust have been an ideal precedent. The cherub-facedchildrenin
HomecomingMarine,their hands clasped,
take the place of angels in scenes such as
Le Nain's. The coarse mechanics are the
shepherds. Downward looks abound in
Rockwell's painting-a piety of pipe
and cigarette, yes, but as rapt and quiet
as any in Bethlehem. The garage is a
mechanical manger flooded with a blond,
sanctifying light casting highlights on the
veteran'sshoulders and halolike cap.
13 RobertFrostat Dartmouth,
ca. 1950s. RaunerSpecial
CollectionsLibrary,Dartmouth
College Library,Hanover,New
Hampshire
The Wartime Voices of Robert Frost
This brings us back to "Directive." The
poem is about the war not just in its
content but also in its combination of
voices-those of soldier and Olympian
god, each aggrieved. The poem's soldierly
voice begins to be clear if we compare
Homecoming Marine with a photograph
of Frost taken sometime in the 1950s
(fig. 13). Each shows a group avidly attentive to a singular dignitary in their
midst. In each case, the dignitary is the
knower of things that few others could
ever know, an extraordinary guide. That
is why the other figures crowd around,
74
Summer2004
eager to hear, eager to ask, though perhaps not really ever able to know, no
matter how eloquent the speaker. The
comparison illustrates the fabled kinship
between soldier and poet. The poet is the
veteran of the places he has invented,
telling of what he alone has seen. "He is
the only teller of news, for he was present
and privy to the appearance which he describes."17The veteran, too, is a type of
poet, detailing his unusual experiencesat least in these cases, like Rockwell's,
where he consents to talk.
In "Directive,"these two voices, poet
and soldier, merge. Frost'sspeakers "are
highly characterized [and] function like
14 OrestesandApollo.Etchingby
ThomasPiroliafterJohn Flaxman's
design for Compositions
form the
Tragedies
ofAeschylus(London,
1831), plate8 x 10 1/2in. Paul
Mellon Collection,YaleCenter
for BritishArt, New Haven,
Connecticut
dramaticcharacters,"
notes the literary
criticMauriceCharney,and the guide in
Frost'spoem is one such figure.18He
speaksas someonesad and wizenedwho
has seen a greatdeal and who takesus
backto anotherplace,empty and wasted,
filledwith shatteredand dissolvedthings.
He speakslike a wartimeparticipantrecountingwhat he'sseen.
This is perhapswhy RandallJarrell,the
personwho best mergedthe voice of poet
and soldierin thoseyears,so loved
"Directive."Jarrell,who graftedthe two
voices into his greatwar poem "The
Death of the BallTurretGunner"(1945),
singledout Frost'spoem as by farthe best
thing in SteepleBushwhen he reviewed
Frost'scollectionin 1947. "Somuch longing, tenderness,and passivesadness,"
Jarrellwrote. He praisedthe poem for its
recognition"thateachlife is tragicbecause
it wearsawayinto the deaththat it at last
half welcomes,"and for its "finalidentifying knowledgeof the deprivedand dispossessed,the insultedand injured."19
Jarrell
does not mentionthe war,but his terms
areredolentwith wartimeloss.
75
AmericanArt
As a poet who had spoken in the
voices of dead and wounded soldiersin
his book LittleFriend,LittleFriend
(1945), JarrellalignsFrost'spoetic voice
with his own. "Letit be the way it was,"
says the grievouslywounded gunner in
Jarrell's"Siegfried.""Letme not matter,
let nothing I do matter/To anybody,
anybody.Let me be what I was."This is
a type of "backout of all this now too
much for us,"and it is no surprisethat
the title page of Jarrell'sbook includes
the sentence"Let'sgo home," spoken
by a serviceman.20No one was so well
qualifiedto appreciatethe sad participant'stone of "Directive"as Randall
Jarrellin 1947.
Then there is the poem'sother, godly
voice, the voice that wants to stay away
from sufferingand partisanshipbut ultimately cannot. One of Frost'smost profound influences,RalphWaldo Emerson,
noted the godly aloofnessof a greatman
duringtimes of turmoil, using John
Flaxman's1831 picture Orestesand Apollo
(fig. 14) as his illustration,and Emerson's
words anticipateFrost'sattitudefor much
of the war. "A preoccupied attention,"
Emerson wrote in "Experience"(1844),
is the only answer to the importunate
frivolity of otherpeople.... In Flaxman's
drawing of the Eumenides ofAeschylus,
OrestessupplicatesApollo, whilst the Furies
sleep on the threshold.Theface of the god
expressesa shade of regretand compassion,
but is calm with the conviction of the
irreconcilablenessof the two spheres.He is
born into otherpolitics, into the eternal
and beautiful. The man at his feet asksfor
his interestin turmoils ofthe earth, into
which his nature cannot enter.And the
Eumenidesthere lying expresspictorially
this disparity. The god is surchargedwith
his divine destiny.21
The great man, for Emerson, cannot
interfere in mortal affairs. He comes
from a separate world, far above the
tribulations of daily life, and it is useless
to ask him to step down from his throne.
His wisdom belongs to the realm of
"other politics . . . the eternal and beautiful," and a zone of sleep marks the gulf
between his space and that of ordinary
human life. Frost thought like this, and
never more so than during World War II.
In 1943 he first published his Emersonian
poem "Choose Something Like a Star,"
which all but diagrams the desperate supplication and divine indifference we see
in Flaxman'simage. Published at a time
when Frost faced intense calls to inspire
his fellow Americans, it makes the poet a
fiery eminence refusing to be drawn in.22
He is a star, lofty, obscure, and taciturn,
giving "strangelylittle aid" to the supplicant seeking his wisdom in times of
stress. "I burn," he proclaims, refusing to
condescend to our level. He says only, for
advice, that we should aspire to his
height, that when "the mob is swayed/
To carry praise or blame too far,"we
should raise ourselves above that rancorous atmosphere to fix on the permanencies, the truths, that he universally
embodies. These truths, for Frost, are
76
Summer2004
those of poetryitself:the poet'splace
duringwar is to remainabove,a radiant
fixed point from on high, helping us to
navigateour way amid stressand horror.
In "Directive,"two yearslater,the god
is still removedand abovein many ways.
He is the cold mountainspring"toolofty
and originalto rage,"an Apollonianfigure, an elevatedand freezingsourceso
differentfrom the other bodies of water
in the poem, those "valleystreamsthat
when aroused. . . leavetheir tattershung
on barband thorn."He is the imperturbablepoetic divinityabove,opposing
the vulgarturbulencebelow.The contrast
for Frostis exactlythe opposition between poetryas an art of removed,cold,
constantpurity,burninglike a frozen
star,and poetryas an art of low emotional arousal.And not surprisingly,it is
the icy watersof the mountainspringakin to the light of the burningstarthat he wants us to drinkto find our
solacein troublingtimes. That indeed is
the poem's"Directive,"for so that titleperemptoryand utterlycommandingresonateswith the Olympianimperative
of the last two lines: "Hereareyour waters and your wateringplace/ Drink and
be whole againbeyond confusion."
Yet in "Directive"Frost'spoetic god
does come down. The god from on high,
the grandpoet, is far friendlierthan
Flaxman'sand Emerson'sApollo: he is a
guide, afterall. "Youmust not mind a
certaincoolnessfrom him"is how the
poem somewhatstartlinglyputs it. (Do
we usuallyspeakof gods that way?)The
greatglacialbeing is still cold, but he has
come down from his mount to take us
backup into the high country.He leads
us, politely ("if you'll let a guide direct
you"), up that "ladder road" and past the
sights of his blighted Olympus to show
us how to be saved, divulging the way
with irascible kindness. Frost's poetry
always oscillates between high and lowthe voice of Milton and other poets mingling with the diction of his plainspoken
farmers. "An Olympian Will Rogers out
of Tanglewood
Tales"is how Jarrellput it
in 1953.23But "Directive"featuresan
especiallyintense indeterminacyof altitude: betweenthe god and the conversationalist,betweenthe unapproachable
other and the deity come down to our
level, still a white-tippedeminence,but
finallyjust a more exaltedman among
men. The tones of "Directive"
superimpose Flaxman's
etchingon the Dartmouth
photograph-the god is simultaneously
aboveand alongsidehis supplicants.
Why the changefrom 1943 to 1945?
Had the pressureof the war become too
greatfor Frostto maintaina godly indifference?No doubt this is partlytrue. "I
felt my standpointshaken/In the universal crisis,"he wrote in "One Step
BackwardTaken,"a late 1920s poem that
he publishedfor the first time in Steeple
Bush,whereit immediatelyprecedes
"Directive."The latterpoem, too, shows
a god shakenfrom the clouds,with its
strangehybridvoice of Apollo as participant-part Emersoniandivinity,part
ball-turretgunner.The mountainspring
ultimatelyblendswith the ragtagvalley
stream,and the cool, exaltedutterance
gusheslike the waterhosing the gunner
from his splinteredturretin Jarrell's
poem.
Yet Frostwas respondingto a larger
question-the meaningand purposeof
poetry duringthe war.In those yearshis
fellow poet ArchibaldMacLeishjoined
the Office of WarInformation(OWI)
and busiedhimself "lecturingwritersall
the time like a commissaron their duties
and responsibilities,"
accordingto
Fussell.24Other writersof Frost'sacquaintance,Carl Sandburgand Louis
Untermeyer,volunteeredtheir services
This idea of salvation,finally,cuts two
ways. In one sense, Frost'slast two
Apollonianlines retainthe taint of the
propagandathey would dispel.The only
differenceis that "Directive"espousesa
propagandaof poetry.Those lines, "Here
areyour watersand your wateringplace./
Drink and be whole againbeyondconfusion," ring with the partisanflavorof
those years,for they acquirea tendentious flavorif reada certainway.
for the OWI. Frost, however, refused to
be drawn in, noting with distaste that
Untermeyer "is writing a primer of
Americanism to be translated into all the
languages of Europe and distributed to the
peoples of Europe."When Frost allowed
Untermeyer to use "Choose Something
Like a Star"for his 1943 edition of
Frost'swork Come In and Other Poems,
in, not there, not in the camp
"Here"--as
of
MacLeish and the other patriotic writers- "areyour waters and your watering
place." Drinking thesewaters, and not
others, is how you may taste of what poetry really is, how you may save yourself
from doubt. This is a grace unavailable to
"the wrong ones," like Untermeyer, who
cannot find the goblet.
77
AmericanArt
the gesturewas fitting, since the poem
expressedFrost'srefusalto becomeone of
the "professional
emotionalists,"as he
calledthe patrioticwriters.When he
turneddown EleanorRoosevelt'spersonal
invitationto writenationalisticverses,
Frostactedthe Apollo to her Orestes.25
By war'send, however,Frostfound
that the isolatedintensityof "I burn"was
no longera sufficientcounterto the model
of poetryas propaganda."Directive"is his
response.The god descendsfrom the
heavensat last, stooping down in sorrow
but also to defendpoetryfrom propagandistic use. Frost'spoem disputesthe idea
that the expressionof nationalisticfaith
is the poet'snoblestwartimeaim, for the
poem substitutesa privateform of pain
and restitutionto help its readersmake
sense of contemporaryevents.The god is
stirredto action not only becausethe war
demandshis comment but becausethe
need to defend the very definitionof poetry requireshim to take us by the hand
and show us whereand how to drink
from its true source.
Two Endings
Photo Credits
Cover,58, 63, 69, ? 1945 SEPS:
Licensedby CurtisPublishingCo.,
Indianapolis,IN, All rightsreserved,
Photo
www.curtispublishing.com,
of theAmerican
courtesyof theArchives
Illustrators
Gallery,New York&
the NationalMuseumof American
Illustration,Newport, RI,
61
www.arnericanillustration.org;
(top), Reproducedby permission
of the VirginiaQuarterlyReview,
Charlottesville;66 (all), O Todd
Webb, Courtesyof EvansGallery
and Todd WebbTrust,Portland,
Maine;71, Photo courtesyof
Getty Images
The title of the poem saysthis, too. It
is meant as a play on the idea of government directives,communiques,and
memoranda-exactly the propaganda
that Frostdeplored.But the title is also
not ironic at all, since it sets forth Frost's
own command:this is what poetryprovides, this is its savingpower.It, too, like
patrioticbelief, can be a panaceain times
of stress,a sourceof certainty.Apollo's
ordersare as authoritativeas any from
the Office of WarInformation.
Thus the wishful thinking of those
last two lines, howeveradmirabletheir
sentiment.They forecloseon-they airily
resolve,in the mannerof propagandathe blight and bleaknessand confusion
with which the poem so honestlyopens.
"Directive,"from firstlines to last, charts
a path analogousto Rockwell'sretreat
from the doubt of his firstpainting.In
Marineand in the last lines
Homecoming
of "Directive,"each man found a propagandisticquasi-religioussalvationwhetherof nationor poetry-as a
reassuringculmination.Eachstood back
from the profoundestenergiesof his
work. "Backout of all this now too much
for us"-better had the poem closedhow
it opened,with the darkdoor of those
firstwords,its portalinto a world made
strangeand sad.
But maybethose final two lines retain
the poem'spathos. Maybein them the
wounded, shakenvoice still speaks,acknowledgingthat even poetryoffersno
magicalcures.The child'sbrokengoblet
belongs only to the world of "makebelieve"and not to the world "in earnest."
Whateverwe imagineto be comfortingis
a help in times of horror,but thereis no
solacebeyond these furtiveand eccentric
acts of imaginarysignificance.26Apollo's
commandis as aggrievedand patheticas
the soldierstrewnon the battlefield,
clutchingsome paltrytalisman-a rabbit'sfoot, a locket, a stick of chewing
gum-to wardoff his wounds. In the
end we, too, have only little things to
make us glad.
Notes
I would like to thank audiences at the
University of Vermont, the Reynolda House
Museum of American Art, the Smithsonian
Institution, Yale University, and Williams
College for their helpful comments when I
lectured on this topic.
"Directive" by Robert Frost is reprinted by
permission of Henry Holt and Company,
LLC. "Directive" was included in The Poetry
ofRobert Frost edited by Edward Connery
Lathem ? 1975 by Lesley Frost Ballantine,
? 1947, ? 1969 by Henry Holt and
Company.
1
S. P. C. Duvall, "Robert Frost's
'Directive'out of Walden," American
Literature31 (January 1960): 482-88;
John Elder, ReadingtheMountainsof
Home (Cambridge: Harvard Univ.
Press, 1998). See also Priscilla Paton,
AbandonedNew England:Landscape
in
the Worksof Homer,Frost,Hopper,Wyeth,
and Bishop (Hanover, N.H.: Univ. Press
of New England, 2003). There are many
other accounts of "Directive." Frank
78
Lentricchia(RobertFrost:ModernPoetics
and theLandscapes
of Self[Durham,
2 In TheVirginiaQuarterly
Review,
"Directive" was followed by two other
new poems by Frost, "The Middleness
of the Road" and "Astrometaphysical."
Neither seems as pointedly related to
the end of the war.
N.C.: Duke Univ. Press, 1975], 112-19)
reads it as Frost's "most compelling and
encompassing meditation on the possibilities of redemption through the imagination"; George W Nitchie (Human
Valuesin thePoetryof RobertFrost
[Durham, N.C.: Duke Univ. Press,
1960], 143-48) compares it with
Milton's "Lycidas";and Maurice Charney
("Robert Frost's Conversational Style,"
Connotations 10, nos. 2-3 [2000-2001]:
147-59) discusses the poem as one
among many of Frost's featuring "speakers engaged in conversation," 147. See
also remarks about "Directive" in
Richard Poirier, RobertFrost: The Work
ofKnowing (New York: Oxford Univ.
Press, 1977) and Lawrence Raab,
"Poetry and Consolation," The Writer's
Chronicle 35 (December 2002): 10-55.
For the dating of "Directive," see Jay
Parini, Robert Frost:A Life (London:
William Heinemann, 1998), 361.
Summer 2004
3
Psychologyfor the Returning Serviceman
(Washington, D.C.: National Research
Council, 1945), 3, 2.
4
Ned Calmer, "New Veteran and Old
Review22
Problems,"VirginiaQuarterly
(Winter 1946): 146-49. Boltd's book is
called The New Veteran(New York:
Penguin, 1945). Boltd met Frost in
October 1943 at the poet's initial (ninehour) seminar as Dartmouth College's
Ticknor Fellow. On their acquaintance,
see Lawrance Thompson and R. H.
Winnick,RobertFrost:TheLaterYears,
1938-1963 (New York: Holt, Rinehart,
and Winston, 1976), 115, 138. For
Boltd's admiring views on Frost, see
Thompson and Winnick, 115, and
Dartmouth
Boltd,"RobertFrostReturns,"
AlumniMagazine,November1943,
13-14.
5
4.
Psychology
for theReturningServiceman,
6
The fact that RockwelladaptedHomecomingGI fromEastmanJohnson'sNegro
Lifeat theSouth,then known as Old
Home(1859, New-YorkHisKentucky
toricalSociety),complicatesthe pathos.
The poignantsceneof the veteran'sreturn is adaptedfrom a famousdepiction
of slavery,with only the one blackboy
climbingthe tree in Rockwell'spainting
hinting at the earlierpicture'ssubject.
7
PaulFussell,Wartime:Understanding
and
Behaviorin the SecondWorldWar(New
York:OxfordUniv. Press,1989), 53;
JamesCovert,quotedin MarkJonathan
Harris,FranklinD. Mitchell,and Steven
America
J. Schechter,TheHomefront:
duringWorldWarII (New York:G. P.
Putnam'sSons, 1984), 223; Barry
Broadfoot,ed., Six WarYears,19391945: Memoriesof Canadiansat Home
andAbroad(Toronto:Doubleday
Canada,1974), 392, quoted in Fussell,
Wartime,288; WillardWaller,The
VeteranComesBack(New York:Dryden
Press,1944), 93.
8
2.
Boltd, TheNew Veteran,
9
theReturning
181.
Serviceman,
Psychologyfor
10 See, for example,JamesAgee'sreviewof
the 1943 film HappyLandin the Nation,
December18, 1943, as quotedin Agee,
Ageeon Film: Criticismand Commenton
theMovies(New York:ModernLibrary,
2000), 46.
11 WilliamGraebner,TheAge ofDoubt:
AmericanThoughtand Culturein the
1940s (Boston:Twayne,1991), 14;
BeaumontNewhall,"CityLens:
ToddWebb'sNew Yorkon Exhibition,"
ArtNews,October 1946, 74. Fora
reprintof Newhall'sreview,see Keith
Davis, ToddWebb:Photographs
of New
Yorkand Paris,1945-1960 (KansasCity,
Mo.: Hallmark Cards, 1984), 103.
12 Ambrose Bierce, "An Occurrence at Owl
Creek Bridge," in Talesof Soldiersand
79
Civiliansand OtherStories(New York:
Penguin,2000), 11-19.
13 Eighteenth-century
artistssuch as Joseph
Wrightof Derby and BenjaminWest
inventedimagesof otherwiseatomized
citizensbound togetherby empathetic
ties. See DavidSolkin,Paintingfor Money:
TheVisualArtsand thePublicSpherein
Eighteenth-Century
England(New Haven
and London:YaleUniv. Press,1993). In
MarineRockwellwas the
Homecoming
inheritorof this visualrhetoric.
14 RobertKotlowitz,BeforeTheirTime:A
Memoir(New York:Knopf, 1998); Ernie
Pyle, BraveMen (New York:Henry Holt,
1944), 156.
15 Psychology
for theReturningServiceman,
3. In the last of his Willie Gillis paintings, WillieGillisat College(1946),
Rockwellagainshowedthe warsouvenir
with equivocalresults.Gillis is perched
on a dormitorywindowseatbelow a suspendedNazi helmet, bayonet,and pennant.The trophiesshow his bravery,as
in Homecoming
Marine,but they also
hang over his head as frankevidenceof
a dead enemy,darklyoffsettingthe brilliant sunlit churchoutsidethe window
and showingthe veteranto be both comfortableand uneasyin his postwarrole.
He can put his feet up but with this
gestureshowshe does not fit in. As in
Marine,the war souvenirin
Homecoming
WillieGillisat Collegeis too unwieldya
sign: connotingheroismand bloodshed,
it causesthe propagandisticpicturenothing but problems.
16 KaralAnn Marling,NormanRockwell
(New York:Abramsin associationwith
the NationalMuseumof AmericanArt,
1997), 108, 107.
17 RalphWaldoEmerson,"The Poet"
(1844), in RalphWaldoEmerson:Selected
Essays,ed. LarzerZiff (New York:
Penguin, 1982), 263.
18 Charney,"RobertFrost'sConversational
Style,"147.
19 Randall Jarrell, "'Tenderness and Passive
Sadness,'" New YorkTimesBook Review,
June 1, 1947, sec. 7, 4.
AmericanArt
20 Jarrell,"Siegfried,"
in LittleFriend,Little
Friend(New York:Dial Press,1945), 20,
title page.
21 Emerson,"Experience"
(1844), in Ralph
WaldoEmerson:SelectedEssays,308-9.
22 RobertFrost,ComeIn and OtherPoems,
selectedby LouisUntermeyer(New
York:Henry Holt, 1943), 192.
23 Jarrell,"The Other Frost,"in Poetryand
theAge (New York:AlfredA. Knopf,
1953), 28.
24 ForMacLeishin the OWI and (before
that) as headof the OFF (Officeof Facts
and Figures),see HenryM. Winkler,The
Politicsof Propaganda:
TheOfficeof War
Information,1942-1945 (New Haven:
YaleUniv. Press,1978); Fussell,Wartime, 172. Foran extendedexampleof
wartimewriting,see MacLeish,
MacLeish's
A TimetoAct:Selected
Addresses
(Boston:
HoughtonMifflin, 1943).
25 Fordissentwithin the OWI, see Winkler,
ThePoliticsofPropaganda,e.g., 64-65.
For Froston propaganda,see Thompson
and Winnick,RobertFrost:TheLater
Years,98-100. See Scott Donaldson,
ArchibaldMacLeish:
An AmericanLife
(Boston:HoughtonMifflin, 1992),
274-75, for a vivid accountof an evening
at the BreadLoafWriters'Conferencein
August 1938 duringwhich Frostrepeatedly disruptedMacLeish'spoetryreadings, includingthe deliveryof his play
Air Raid.For "ChooseSomethingLike a
Star"appearingin ComeIn and Other
Poems,see Thompson and Winnick, 182.
(The poem was laterincludedas partof
an afterwordto Frost's1949 Complete
Poems,underthe more peremptorytitle
"TakeSomethingLikea Star.")Forthe
poem'sEmersonianconnotation,see
Parini,RobertFrost:A Life,373.
26 Lentricchia,RobertFrost:ModernPoetics
and theLandscapes
ofSelf 119, writes:
"Ourtransformationfromconfused
adult to simplechild is not completeand
could not be complete .... We
shall drink as much as a broken goblet
will allow." Frost's lesson, Lentricchia
notes, is to show us "the limits of our
redemption.