Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2016

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Introduction-Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4-Postscript

Key Figures

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Chapter 4-PostscriptChapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 4 Summary: “Calling Home From Mars”

Chapter 4 examines fundamental questions about what kind of society we want to live in. Junger moves from the specific condition of soldiers to the more general position of workers in US society. Noting the irony of the anti-war bumper sticker “no blood for oil” during the run-up to the Iraq War in 2003 given that a machine that runs on oil was used to broadcast such a message, Junger connects war to everyday life in US society. Although he has been cultivating this connection throughout Tribe, Chapter 4 makes it explicit. For instance, he shares his own opposition to the Iraq War but then asserts that the duplicity of some antiwar rhetoric (such as the bumper sticker) bespeaks a larger hypocrisy across the political spectrum and throughout social life. The American public, Junger argues, is not simply disconnected from its military; it is “disconnected from just about everything” (111). He explains that the average American worker makes a much greater sacrifice than soldiers do simply by going to work, citing workplace mortality statistics that show more workers lose their lives on the job in the United States annually than died in the entire Afghan War (111).

Disaffiliation, as Junger puts it, can be as petty as public littering or as consequential as Wall Street banks claiming billion-dollar bailouts after their frenzy of fraud and speculation ran the US economy into the ground in 2008, leaving millions of people jobless and homeless. The larger social disconnect underwriting American society, Junger continues, is perhaps most spectacularly evident in “violence against your own people” (113). The fear that effective defense against external foes may yet leave society vulnerable to the enemy from within has become invigorated in the United States during the era of the Middle East wars by the rise of rampage shootings across the country. Junger notes that this phenomenon only occurs in either affluent, mostly white suburbs or exurbs, or in rural towns that are also majority-white as well as Christian and low-crime.

This discussion brings Junger to the 2009 case of Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl. When Bergdahl deserted his unit in Afghanistan, he was scorned by US leaders on both sides of the Congressional aisle and pilloried throughout the media. Junger, however, observes the hypocrisy and arbitrariness of scorning Bergdahl’s betrayal but condoning the far more consequential betrayal of the American people committed by the bankers and traders who caused the 2008 financial collapse. In the end, Junger calls for ceremonies and rituals that can re-instill the social solidarity so vital for a healthy society.

Postscript Summary

In the brief Postscript, Junger bookends his analysis by returning to the story he told in his Introduction. He states that while researching Tribe he finally found the answer to why the homeless man in Wyoming gave Junger his lunch 30 years before: because the man refused, despite his destitute state, to be dead inside.

Chapter 4-Postscript Analysis

Whereas Chapter 3 presents a logical and scientific explanation of what ails US society, Chapter 4 finds Junger wrapping up Tribe with an emotional appeal to basic human decency. Junger is telling us, through stories, that we are a storytelling people—that we construct our reality through the stories we tell about ourselves and each other. He notes how when the Navajo people were rounded up by the US government and confined to a reservation, the people came to worry that the warrior skills that had protected them for thousands of years but were no longer needed would now be turned inward, against the very society that warriors used to protect. This circumstance strengthened their mythology of skinwalkers— people who could subvert the powers of animals to prey upon other people.

Not coincidentally, the murder rate on the Navajo reservation is four times the national average, and indigenous women across North America are more than twice as likely to experience violence as any other demographic on the continent, a problem largely unheard of prior to the era of Native American genocide. Sometimes the stories we tell point to an under-appreciated reality; at other times, we can tell new stories to change our reality.

Junger’s conflicted relationship to war reflects that of the wider US society. He claims that in many countries, there is known to be a decrease in “antisocial behavior” during wartime, citing suicide statistics in New York after 9/11. His larger point here is that war brings unity. This perspective hides as much as it reveals, however, given the correlations between domestic violence, sexual assault, and war. Evidence has long shown that domestic violence and sexual assault increase during times of war, corresponding to old findings about the rampant sex crimes committed by soldiers on the battlefield and to new findings that show high rates of sexual assault within the military itself.

Junger argues that American society must address the psychological toll of war for those who go off to fight, and he calls for veterans across the country to use their town halls to speak freely about their experience at war as a means to communal healing.