The Forever War

In many ways, the physics of The Forever War—the near light-speed travel—is merely a device that forces Mandella to deal with the unforgiving passage of time. Constant jumping through collapsars at hyperspeed keeps Mandella young while the world around him ages at the usual pace. Rather than living a normal life and witnessing a lifetime’s worth of gradual changes, Mandella leaves Earth and returns decades later to a changed world. Without time to process these changes at his own speed, he must confront them head-on with little warning. When he returns to Earth after his first tour of duty, he discovers a greatly changed, and disturbing, landscape. The world is marred by overpopulation, food shortages, and crime, with authoritarian measures to deal with these problems firmly in place. Health care is rationed—a jab at the US system of private insurance that prioritizes care for those with the means to pay for it—and same-sex behavior is “encouraged” to control population growth.

Interestingly, this particular social change disturbs Mandella the most. He seems not at all troubled that he must buy a gun for personal protection or that food is so expensive it takes a large bite out of his considerable back pay, but when he discovers his mother has a female lover, he feels “very hollow and lost” (145). In 1974, the year of the book’s publication, although many gay people still felt the need to conceal their identity, the gay rights movement was firmly underway. All social changes ultimately require mainstream acceptance, but perhaps this was one Haldeman was reluctant to embrace.

The discomfort of adapting to a changing society is a common theme on page and screen. The British television drama Downton Abbey, for example, focused on the aristocratic Crawley family, a wealthy clan steeped in traditions of class and social status. The Crawleys, however, live in changing times. Growing dissatisfaction with the entrenched class structure as well as technological revolutions signal a new world order, something the Crawleys, especially the patriarch, the Earl of Grantham, struggle to accept. When the family finally relents and installs a telephone, for example, the head butler fears and loathes the technology simply because of its unfamiliarity. The Earl is outraged when the family chauffeur falls in love with his daughter and wants to marry her, a clear violation of class protocols. By creating vast leaps in time for its characters, The Forever War creates a heightened sense of changing society, forcing its characters to face dramatic changes in morals, values, and technology, with varying results.

During Mandella’s first face-to-face engagement with the Taurans, Sergeant Cortez triggers a post-hypnotic suggestion implanted in all the recruits, transforming them into raging killing machines. At the heart of the suggestion is a fabricated narrative of the Taurans as baby killers and rapists, and while Mandella intellectually understands the manipulation at work, he is powerless to resist it. He kills because, under the suggestion’s power, doing so feels justified and right. Painting false narratives to generate hate and fear is one of the oldest tricks in the book and one of the most reliable. After the Civil War, when millions of Black people were suddenly free, the narrative—reinforced in pulp novels and Hollywood films—portrayed them as savages out to rape white women. This dominant narrative gave fuel to the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and justified the torture and murder of thousands of Blacks (Pilgrim, David. “The Brute Caricature.” Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia, Ferris State University, November 2000, www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/brute/. Accessed 27 Aug. 2021). Hitler famously blamed the Jews for Germany’s economic woes after World War I. After the September 11 attacks, Muslims were vilified as terrorists, mosques were vandalized, and hate crimes against Muslims rose. This false narrative gave the United States military popular support for its invasion of Afghanistan and, later, Iraq.

Ironically, the Tauran propaganda, which allows the government, under the auspices of the Elite Conscription Act, to draft civilians by virtue of their skills and education, shifts into high gear before a single human has ever seen one. This progression makes perfect sense. An unknown enemy is far easier to demonize than one that is known, or at least knowable. Simple communication, Haldeman suggests, could have averted the 1,000-year war, a conflict triggered by misunderstanding and sustained by blind ego. The Forever War finally ends when a collective of human clones, joined by a linked consciousness, is able to communicate with the Taurans and reach a truce. How many lives might have been spared, the novel asks, if humanity had taken a moment to think before mobilizing the troops.