Omar El Akkad, American War, 2017

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2017.

Katie Bruno, Adayliah Ley, and Cassie Pfitzenmayer

Maps for Context

Plot Summary

In the year 2069, the United States federal government passed the Sustainable Future Act, which prohibited the use of fossil fuels anywhere in the country. In 2073, the United States President Daniel Ki is killed by suicide bomber Julia Templestowe in Jackson, Mississippi. Following this pivotal moment, the southern portion of the US, including Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia seceded from the union to create their own fossil fuel based country, the Free Southern States. Texas left the union as well, but was swiftly invaded by Mexico, and fighting from this invasion spans into Louisiana. Rebellion also occurred in South Carolina, but a bioweapon called “The Slow” was released by the Northern military which made the entire state incredibly lethargic, and a quarantine wall was erected to prevent the spread of the disease beyond its borders. Beyond these tangible acts of war and rebellion, the United States landscape had been deeply altered by a changing climate. Sea level rise had left much of the south under water, and frequent, intense, storms ravaged the land.

In 2075, six year old Sarah T. Chestnut (Sarat) is living in Louisiana with her mother, Martina, her father, Benjamin, her older brother, Simon (9), and her twin sister, Dana. Benjamin Chestnut goes into Baton Rouge, where he is attempting to obtain a work license to move his family away from the fighting and for a chance at prosperity in the North. A rebel suicide bombing in Baton Rouge kills Benjamin, and following her husband’s death, Martina opts to leave Louisiana and seek refuge at Camp Patience, a refugee camp located along the Tennessee-Mississippi line. 

The Chestnut family spent six years at Camp Patience. Martina makes money writing letters and pleas for help for other refugees, while Simon gets involved with a local group of Southern Rebels. Dana fits in with the adolescents at the camp easily, while Sarat is an outsider, having a single friend, Marcus, with whom she explores the local surroundings. Eventually, Sarat’s outsider reputation earns the attention of Albert Gaines, a recruiter for the Southern Rebels. He brings Sarat down into his office in the basement of the administration building in the evenings and shows her literature, fine foods and history, slowly working to indoctrinate her into his beliefs. She is also introduced to Joe, who is an agent of the Bouazizi Empire, which is a nation slowly growing overseas that helps to aid in the South in the war against the North with the goal of keeping the United States broken and split, unable to rise into a major power once again. After six years at the camp, the Northern militia attacks, and many of the refugees are murdered, including Sarat’s mother, while Simon is seriously injured. 

The Free Southern government relocates Dana and Sarat to Lincolnton, Georgia, where they are eventually joined by Simon, who is recovering from a nearly-fatal head wound. Karina, a house nurse, is also sent in order to watch over Simon. Over five years, the Chestnuts adjust to this new life; Simon slowly recovers under Karina’s care, and Sarat becomes increasingly vengeful as she dives deeper into the rebel cause and continues to learn from Gaines. She is trained by Joe and Albert to assassinate the Northern General Joseph Weiland, and succeeds at the task. This victory is celebrated in the South, but leads to a crackdown on Southern Rebels. Soon after the assassination, Dana is killed by rogue Northern drones called “Birds”, and Sarat is arrested and taken to Sugarloaf Detention Center, a facility that tortures suspected rebels. Over her seven years in the facility, Sarat is waterboarded and admits to many crimes she did not commit. Eventually, as the war ends, she is released from the facility and found not guilty, but the time at Sugarloaf is incredibly damaging for Sarat.

Sarat returns to Lincolnton to find that Simon and Karina are married, and have a son, Benjamin who is 6 years old. The remaining rebels connect Sarat to a guard from Sugarloaf, Bud Baker, who played a main role in her torture. She brutally kills him in front of his family, but chooses to leave them alive when seeing his sons are twins. Joe then finds Sarat and recruits her for one final act of vengeance: to attend the Reunification Day ceremony celebrating the end of the war between the North and the South, and release an incredibly deadly virus with the aim of crippling the country. Sarat agrees, but has come to care for Benjamin and arranges to have him smuggled to New Anchorage, where he would be safe from the virus. Sarat then travels to the ceremony and releases the plague that would go on to kill 110 million people. 

As an adult, Benjamin locates Sarat’s diaries and learns the roles she played not only in the rebellion, but in the Reunification Plague. As an act of spite, he burns her diaries, making it certain that she will never get the acclaim of being the one responsible for so many deaths. The only page he decides to save is the opening line of the book.

Character Bios

• Sarat (Sara T) Chestnut:  The protagonist of American War, Sarat Chestnut follows a tumultuous path throughout her childhood as a refugee and her role as a Southern rebel as a young adult. As a child, Sarat displays tomboyish characteristics, yearning for adventure. When she winds up at Camp Patience with her twin sister, Dana, older brother, and mother, the confines of the refugee camp do not contain her spirit. Growing into her body, Sarat’s tall and strong physique gained her a reputation around the camp, earning her the attention of Southern Rebellion Leader, Albert Gaines. From this point on, Sarat seeks vengeance for the South and eventually for her family after the North attacks her home in the massacre at Camp Patience. Due to these violent and horrific scenes, Sarat reflects these actions through the assassination of a key war general from the North and eventually seeks revenge through the release of a bioweapon that leads to mass devastation nationwide. 
• Dana Chestnut: Sarat’s twin sister is known as beautiful and ladylike throughout their childhood. Always wanting to grow up too quickly, Dana finds herself surrounded by the “popular” and “cool” kids of the refugee camp. Unlike her sister, whose violent side grows, Dana retreats into herself and her beauty as a means to cope with the tragedies around her. As she grows into a young woman, Dana earns the attention of many men around their home in Lincolnton, GA. Her life ends tragically with a drone attack from the Blues which sends her sister spiraling as she loses more of her loved ones. 
• Simon Chestnut: At a young age, Simon is known as Sarat and Dana’s rebellious and bold older brother. When the massacre occurs at Camp Patience, he suffers a traumatic brain injury leaving him non-verbal and essentially disabled. Slowly, with the help of Karina, the family’s in-house caretaker, his condition improves. Known as the miracle boy due to his survival, Southern women flock to his bedside to touch his scar and pray for his recovery. When Sarat is taken away and sent to prison, he recovers almost entirely and marries Karina. Together they have a son named after his late father, Benjamin. Unlike his younger self, Simon becomes a family-oriented man. Cultivating a successful farm, Simon gains a powerful reputation amongst the Lincolnton community. While he sought adventure as a child, his values changed perhaps as a result of his life-altering injuries and his new responsibilities as a parent. 
• Benjamin (father): Only featured in the first part of the book, Benjamin Chestnut is known for how he values his family’s safety. Seeking out better work and living conditions in the North, Benjamin departs the family home to attain a work permit. Sadly his life comes to an end rather quickly with the Rebel attack in Baton Rouge’s by a homicide bomber. 
• Martina (mother): Due to the unexpected murder of her husband, Martina fears the approaching war closing in on her family. Putting on a strong face for her children, Martina packs up their belongings and brings her kids northward towards what she believes will be safer. Arriving at Camp Patience, she earns a living writing letters on the behalf of fellow refugees due to her reading and writing skills. This proves unsuccessful but it provides hope to her neighbors and friends. Saddened by her life at camp, Martina drowns her feelings in home-brewed alcohol playing cards with her friends late into the evenings. Her children live lives of their own out exploring and getting into trouble, but they are all confined by their ties to one another. Martina dies in the Massacre of Camp Patience. 
• Karina Chowdhury: First introduced in Part 3, Karina plays a key role in the wellbeing and upkeep of the Chestnut family home. Often butting heads with the young and stubborn Sarat, Karina finds refuge in her time caring for Simon. They grow fond of each other and during Sarat’s time at Sugarloaf, she and Simon marry. Together they have a son, Benjamin. Upon Sarat’s return, Karina continuously finds her sister-in-law insufferable and strange. Karina has made a home out of the house that was once Sarat’s and she wants to keep it that way. Sarat’s resistance to her hospitality frustrates Karina. She feels she has earned her place in this family and has helped heal Simon. 
• Albert Gaines: An ex-soldier, the wealthy and powerful recruiter for the Southern rebels first makes an appearance in Sarat’s life at the age of 12. Taking her under his wind, Gaines shares his views and resources with her, training her to become a violent terrorist and weapon. Throughout his life and portrayal in the book, it becomes clear that Gaines is a lonely man. His family wants nothing to do with him as he is complicit in the war and hungry for power. Later in the book, we see him again, now weakened and weary. We discover that he is responsible for Sarat’s imprisonment. Instead of dying at the hands of the vengeful Sarat, she leaves him alone, crippled in his cabin; he has already suffered. 
• Joe (Yousef Bin Rashid): Old friend of Albert Gaines, Joe assists Sarat in her terrorist ventures. From her training and brainwashing, Joe is an essential player in the making of Sarat’s character. While he disappears for several years, he reemerges in Sarat’s life when she seeks revenge on those who have wronged her. He helps her track down Albert Gaines and ultimately supplies her with the disease that wipes out the majority of the American population. While his character is known to be providing aid to the broken FSS, he presumably has ulterior motives of maintaining the power dynamic between his home, the Boauzizi Empire and the US. 
• Benjamin (Simon’s son): The author of American War, Benjamin is introduced as the anonymous narrator in the prologue. He describes his life as a member of the Miraculous Generation, a small population of people born during the Second American Civil War who survived the Reunification Plague. In this collection of stories from Sarat’s journals, his aunt, he attempts to describe the ruin that this story is. He first is introduced in the main story at the age of six. Upon his aunt’s return from prison, he grows curious and fond of this strange character. Through her, he learns to push the confines of his family’s compound and to think critically about the world around him, possibly prompting his future as a historian. Shortly after her arrival, Sarat kidnaps him and sends him northward to save him from the Reunification Plague. He lives out the rest of his life in New Anchorage as an orphan. Later becoming a historian and collecting information on the war, his aunt’s diaries proved useful in his understanding of his family history and the war overall. 
• Marcus Exum (Sarat’s friend and later a Blue soldier): Sarat’s friend at Camp Patience, Marcus and his father escape and make it into the Blue country by some miracle. He becomes a soldier for the North and eventually reconnects with Sarat. They meet every month at Garden Sound, a café on an island at the mouth of the harbor which remains a neutral zone. Marcus provides Sarat with updates on the war and how her actions will cause retaliation. After Sarat’s term at Sugarloaf, she goes to the market with her family where she runs into him in his uniform. Though unaware of who he is, she first tries to kill him before Benjamin intercepts, saving his life and ultimately reuniting the long-lost friends.

Plot Timeline

Prologue	Part 1	Part 2	Part 3	Part 4
2069: The Sustainable Future Act	April 2075: Benjamin Chestnut leaves the family home in James, Louisianan in search of a visa at the Federal Building in Baton Rouge. He is martyred by a suicide bomber.	July 2081: Iuka, Mississippi: The Chestnut family has spent 6 years at Camp Patience.	October 2086: Lincolnton, Georgia: Now living at a government sponsored house, Sarat finds herself the head of the household. Simon’s injuries hamper his physical and neurological abilities. He is cared for by an immigrant from the Bouazizi Empire, Karine Chowdhury who grows fond of him despite his childlike tendencies.	2095: Sarat returns to her home in Lincolnton, GA to a married Simon and Karina and their six year old son, Benjamin. Her brother has recovered significantly and the family runs a vegetable farm on the property.
2073: Assassination of President Ki by FSS Rebels	Hearing of his death, Martina puts on a strong facade and packs up her children and home and moves them Northward with the help of their neighbor to Camp Patience	Over the course of her time at Camp Patience, Sarat makes the acquaintance of Albert Gaines who trains/brainwashes her to become a Southern rebel. He lights a flame in the impressionable main character.	Under the guidance of Gaines and Joe (Yousef Bin Rashid), Sarat trains for the assassination of Northern General Joseph Weiland. Assassinating him at a checkpoint along the North-South border.	Shortly after her return, Sarat connects with old friends to locate the guard that tortured her in prison, Bud Baker. Upon finding him, she tortures him in front of his wife and children and ultimately kills him.
2074: Start of the Second American Civil War		She also befriends a fellow refugee, Marcus Exum, who later escapes to the North with his father.	Days following, Sarat and her sister spent a night celebrating her victory and the changing course of the war.	Following the brutal event, Joe tracks her down and congratulates her act of revenge. Going one step further, Joe provides Sarat with a bio-weapon, a virus, that is intended to wipe out most of the population.
		The massacre at Camp Patience by Northern rebels leads to the death of Martina Chestnut and the handicapping of Simon Chestnut by a near-fatal head-wound.	The celebrations do not last long as Dana is killed in a drone strike months later and Sarat is arrested for her terrorist crimes. She is taken to Sugarloaf Detention Facility where she is tortured for a number of years until they break her.	Prior to Reunification Day, Sarat enlists “friends” to transport Benjamin to New Anchorage where he will be spared from the disease and ties up her loose ends.
			At the end of the war, Sarat’s name is clear and they set her free.	On Reunification Day, Sarat releases the virus at the celebration at the Northern capital in Ohio. It causes decades worth of plague.
				Years later, as an adult, Benjamin receivs a letter sent by Sarat years prior stating her love for him and that she needed to explain some things. He stashes it away feeling frustrated by her and doesn’t return to it until he is an old man. Following the coordinates from the letter, Benjamin returns to the Continental US and tracks down her past lover, Layla Denomme Jr. who survived the plague thanks to Sarat’s warnings and preparations. At her home, he finds Sarat’s diaries.
				The end of the book explains how the book came to be. Following the discovery of these diaries, Benjamin reads them and writes “American War”. Afterwards, he sets the diaries aflame, burning the history of his aunt. He only keeps the first page which starts the book itself.

Imagined Human Actions and Solutions

• Action: Sustainability Act: prevented the use of fossil fuels in the United States.
  • Solution: Free Southern State – a “solution” to continue using fossil fuels
    • Leads to Civil War in the United States
      • Red States- the “MAG”
        • Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia
        • South Carolina- quarantined
    • Mexico reclaims some of the (former) American Southwest after secession- Mexican protectorate
      • Fighting that stretches into Louisiana, near the Chestnuts home
  • Solution: Southern Rebellion
    • For those who believe that the FSS did not take extreme enough measures against the Northern states.
      • Albert Gaines- recruiter.
      • In league with the Bouazizi empire.
      • Recruited impressionable youth and disillusioned southerners.
        • Julia Templestowe, Sarat, Simon, etc. 
    • Most of the fighting in the war ended within the first five-ish years of the war, but was prolonged by rebel groups for the next half a decade. 
• Action: Rebellion against the ideas of the North, with much of it taking place in South Carolina.
  • Solution: “The Slow”
    • Incapacitates the whole state of South Carolina by making them incredibly lethargic. 
• Action: War ends, peace is agreed to, and the North and South will remerge into the United States.
  • Solution: Bouazizi Empire releases Reunification Plague to prevent the US from rising back into power.
    • Kills 110 million people 
    • Created by Gary Tusk, who was searching for a cure to the Slow in South Carolina, worked initially, but killed the subjects within the span of a week.
    • Tusk was alienated by his lack of success and the suffering he had witnessed in South Carolina. Desperate to escape America, he sold his plague to the Bouazizi Empire in exchange for passage and protection in the country to start a new life. 
    • The plague was eventually released in Columbus, Ohio, during the Reunification Ceremony. The Bouazizi Empire was intent on prolonging the war and leaving the US in shambles so that they could rise to power alongside the People’s Republic of China, permanently removing the US from contention as a superpower.

Technology

Technology plays an important role in American War, as the proposed switch from fossil fuels to full sustainable technology is what causes the rift between the North and South that contributes to the main conflict. However, the role of technology expands beyond this large conflict, and contributes in smaller, yet still significant ways throughout the story.

While we didn’t explicitly get to see these comparisons, it would have been interesting to see how technology was able to advance in the North, which was significantly less war-torn than the South and had more resources for advancement, and how that impacted quality of life. We do know that fossil fuels no longer carried the same economic benefits that they do today, and that was clear by how the economic state of the South portrayed. However, it would’ve been interesting to see this in direct comparison to the North throughout the story. 

Portrayal of Heroes and Villains

This book illustrates the development of the main character Sarat from a hero to a villain based on the environmental conditions she was surrounded by. As the plot progresses, readers experience with Sarat the devastations that she experiences, as she loses all of her loved ones and witnesses the deterioration of her society. Her increase in destructive and violent behavior runs parallel to the horrific deaths of her family members and the struggles she faces. This direct perspective of Sarat throughout her hardships in the plot allows us to understand her transition from hero to villain. The events throughout the book’s plot do not portray Sarat as a villain directly, but rather present her as a product of her environment. The purpose of this book is not to support, admire, or love Sarat, but rather to understand her. There should be dislike of her and her actions, but also an understanding of how she got to where she was and why she acted the way she did throughout the book. The plot began with Sarat being portrayed as a potential hero and a scapegoat for the Southern rebels. However, as her life continues and she consistently is betrayed by those she trusts and witnesses losses of those she loves, she quickly spirals into the reflection of a standard villain. One of the most defining quotes in the novel is from Sarat: “If it had been you, you’d have done no different.” This speaks to her behavior in a situation of extreme pressure and devastation and how her environment dictated her character. Sarat is the depiction of a hero developed into a villain due to her surroundings. Her environmental conditions limited her abilities to be a hero in the context of the plot.

Reflections and Echoes of Environmental Thought

This novel offers to its readers a reflection on American environmental thought and the hopelessness that has succeeded environmental thought in the current day. Throughout the plot, there is a perpetuation of the idea of everything being temporary and an absolute lack of permanence in the context of people, places, and objects alike. Sarat and her community must be prepared to relocate at any given moment due to constant destruction and violence throughout their region. This is adjacent not only to the refugees of war torn countries in the present day world, but also to climate refugees who are being forced to flee their homes because of climate disasters in their regions. The deterioration of communities from natural disasters has caused a loss of permanence for those in these vulnerable populations. This feeling is reflected in the characters in this novel as they repeatedly experience the loss of their surroundings and must be removed from a feeling of rootedness in their environment. With this absence of value in one’s environment comes an absence of seeing a future. Without the promise of anything to be long-lasting, it becomes difficult to imagine a future, let alone a sustainable and fulfilling future. This is a sentiment shared among characters in the novel as all characters spend most of the plot attempting to survive. The collective feelings of dread and loss curated by thematic elements in the novel run parallel to those in present day environmental reflections. It becomes easy to wallow in a feeling of hopelessness when surrounded by immense loss and devastation of natural and social entities, something which is seen in our world today as climate change wipes out considerable portions of our society. This novel ultimately presents us with an illustration of a future without hope if we are to continue living our unsustainable lifestyles, a future that has been expressed in standard American environmental thought.

Commentary of this Imagined Future on our Present

• The plot is reflective of the terrorism and war violence that occurs today in Afghanistan and Iraq- places where, although we might have troops stationed there, the United States is still far removed from in terms of its immediate effects.
  • The plot features characters who are suddenly exposed to war at the most extreme levels due to no fault of their own. This is currently a common occurrence throughout regions like the Middle East, but in the United States, this is not the typical case.
  • In recent history, the United States has not experienced firsthand the magnitude of war impacts in the way that citizens of other nations have. This, the lack of understanding of the world where war occurs, is in itself an immense privilege.
    • Citizens of the United States hold this privilege; the nation contributes to war overseas in a way that does not directly affect its citizens. We hold the privilege of being able to pretend that people suffering far away are doing so in an exotic manner based on their proximity to where we are.
    • The novel forces us to place ourselves, those  who are living in the Western world, directly into the shoes of those who are surviving in a war torn, advanced dystopian society. It brings a dark feeling of reality to the potential future of continued political tensions and polarization.
• The representation of Northern states as “blue states” and Southern states as “red states” is a commentary of the current political divide in the United States and the political polarization both on a national and state level.
  • The persistence of polarity both in our political and social societies is strongly mirrored in this novel, particularly in the realm of tensions caused by climate change and climate impacts. The feeling of hopelessness because of separation is very evident, in the same way it is in our current political climate.
• In a similar light, the idea of the second American Civil War draws upon timely conflicts of what we, as humans, are entitled to. The separation between North and South is reflective of the previous Civil War in the United States, but the conflict here differs. However, both conflicts are centered around human rights. In regards to the previous Civil War, the struggle was pertaining to human rights to other humans, and the belief that humans were entitled to ownership of others.
  • Now, the conflict in this novel is related to human rights to use fossil fuels, and the belief that humans are entitled to consumption of resources. In both cases, though, we can see that entitlement to ownership, whether it be of people or of natural entities, is not a sustainable perspective for society.
  • We are left with the question: what do we, as humans, have the right to, and how do we balance that with preservation of the world?