Mennonites in crisis : Figures of paradox in "Peace Shall Destroy Many"

Abstract

Peace Shall Destroy Many opens with a “Prelude” scene in which two young boys by a stream pause to contemplate, among other things, “the water’s eternal refolding over the rocks” (10).1 This figure of the timeless movement of nature continues in the form of rocks, as chapter one introduces Thom Wiens contemplating the amount of time and energy needed to clear a field of stones relative to the speed of the new technological machines of war performing training maneuvers overhead. Mennonite farmers such as he patiently work to mold the eternal, dynamic earth, and yet never truly subdue or bring the eternity of nature under human control, because, as Thom notes later in the story at the onset of the bitter-cold winter, “the whole cycle of seasons was an endless battle to retain existence” (199). Foremost in Thom’s mind as he works in the field is not the seemingly eternal nature of the heavy stones, but the fragile, finite character of human life. “There were no machines to pick rocks. But the machines for death were wind-swift. For a moment he felt he had discovered a great truth, veiled until now: the long growing of life and the quick irrevocableness of death”