List of Figures Introduction: A True War Story Chapter 1: The Bomber The Bomber Lyric The Bomber as Scapegoat: Randall Jarrell's "Eighth Air Force" Atrocity Aesthetics: James Dickey's "The Firebombing" Agency and Death Chapter 2: Repetitions of a Hero The Negro Hero and the Nation within a Nation The Hero as Social Media: The Caine Mutiny Participating in the Heroic: Wallace Stevens and the Poetry of War The Reality of the Modern State: The Thin Red Line Chapter 3: War as Comedy Zany Dialectics: "Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips" The Education of a War Poet: Kenneth Koch at War Barbaric Poetry: From Okinawa to the Cold War Encoding War: "Sun Out" and "The Islands" Chapter 4: Total War and Historical Time War as Origin Myth: Joan Didion's Run River War as a Promise to the Future: "Letter from Paradise, 21° 19' N., 157° 52' W." The Hanged Man and the Military-Industrial Complex: The Young Lions and Gravity's Rainbow One World, One War: The Great War and Modern Memory War as Fantasy: Star Wars Chapter 5: The Trauma Hero Combat Gnosticism from Clausewitz to The Yellow Birds Traumatic Revelation "The Good War" and Postmodern Memory Conclusion: Nothing Is Over Acknowledgments Works Cited Index.