MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

The most recent U.S. interventions in the Middle East – in Afghanistan and later in Iraq – have arguably become the most controversial issues not only in U.S. foreign policy but also in American cultural studies. Film and literature have widely responded to the two interventions overseas, producing multiple fictional and documentary stories about America’s war against terrorism. Just as the interventionist policy in the Middle East has divided the world audience into supporters and critics, so do literary and cinematic texts have been both censuring and approving of the actions of the U.S. in the Middle East. This paper will focus specifically on the way U.S. intervention in Afghanistan is represented in Aaron Gwyn’s novel Wynne’s War. The novel indeed focuses on the problem of U.S. intervention and America’s just War on Terror, although from quite an unusual perspective. This paper claims that narrating the story of U.S. soldiers who have to ride horses in the steep mountains of Afghanistan in order to find terrorists, the book metaphorically portrays U.S. military men as cowboys, thus turning the Afghanistan War into a western, where American soldiers has to fight evil personified in the local terrorists. The paper will therefore pay close attention to the author’s portrayal of the war but it will also examine the image of the American soldier, as it is depicted in the novel.