[Only a couple
New England states celebrate
Patriots’ Day, which officially pays
tribute to the colonial Minutemen who helped begin the American Revolution at
Lexington and Concord. But the holiday offers a chance to think about
patriotism in America more broadly, which I’ll do this week, starting with my annual
Patriots’ Day post and leading up to an update on my new
AmericanStudying book!]
On the only time and way we can be patriotic.
One of my favorite literary exchanges of all time, and the
one with which I began the Introduction to my fourth
book, occurs in the opening chapter of George
R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones
(1996; the first book in the A Song of
Ice and Fire series that has been adapted into the popular HBO show). Seven
year-old Brandon “Bran” Stark is riding home with his father and brothers from
his first experience witnessing one of his father’s most difficult duties as a
lord, the execution of a criminal; his father insists that if he is to sentence
men to die, he should be the one to execute them, and likewise insists that his
sons learn of and witness this once they are old enough. Two of Bran’s brothers
have been debating whether the man died bravely or as a coward, and when Bran
asks his father which was true, his father turns the question around to him.
“Can a man be brave when he is afraid?” Bran asks. “That is the only time a man
can be brave,” his father replies.
On the surface the line might seem obvious, an appeal to
some of our very trite narratives about courage in the face of danger and the
like (narratives that operate in explicit contrast to the ideas of cowardice
with which I engaged in this post). But to my mind the moment, like all of
Martin’s amazingly dense and complex series, works instead to undermine our
easy narratives and force us to confront more difficult and genuine truths.
That is, I believe we tend to define bravery, courage, heroism as the absence
of fear, as those individuals who in the face of danger do not feel the same
limiting emotions that others do and so can rise to the occasion more fully.
But Martin’s truth is quite the opposite—that bravery is instead something that
is found through and then beyond fear, that it is only by admitting the darker
and more potentially limiting realities that we can then strive for the
brightest and most ideal possibilities. I find that insight so potent not only
because of its potential to revise oversimplifying narratives and force us to
confront a complex duality instead, but also because it posits a version of
heroism that any individual can achieve—if everyone feels fear in the face of
danger, then everyone has the potential to be brave as well.
HBO recently premiered the final season of their award-winning series A Game of Thrones; the first season
covered all of that first book of Martin’s, the second moved on to book two, and
so on for subsequent seasons. I’ve only ever watched season one and had mixed
feelings that kept me from going further at this point, but no matter what the
series has brought Martin’s works and themes to a far wider audience. But if
that’s one reason why I’m thinking about this exchange today, the other is of
course this Massachusetts
(and Maine)-specific holiday: Patriots’ Day. As with our narratives of
courage and heroism, I believe that far too many of our ideals of patriotism
focus on what I would call the easy kind: the patriotism that salutes a flag,
that sings an anthem, that pledges allegiance, that says things like “God bless
America” and “greatest country in the world” by rote. Whatever the communal
value of such patriotism, it asks virtually nothing of individuals, and does
even less to push a nation to be the best version of itself (if anything, it
argues that the nation is already that best version). So in parallel to
Martin’s line, I would argue for the harder and more genuine kind of
patriotism, the kind that faces the darkest realities and strives for the brightest
hope through that recognition, the kind that, when asked “Can an American be a
patriot if he/she is critical of his/her country?,” replies, “That is the only
time an American can be a patriot.”
Patriotic series
continues tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think?
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