Direct and structural violence in Roy Scranton’s war porn

Abstract

Roy Scranton's War Porn shocks the reader back to reality by removing the gloss that most war novels have, which exalts the lives of the troops. His vicious gaze spares nothing or nobody. Scranton, however, emphasizes to the reader what war really is from the viewpoints of the occupying force and the oppressed. It talks about the suffering of war, its destruction, and the purposeful or unintentional crimes the US army perpetrated at the time. The novel alternates between three different settings: the first is a typical barbecue between friends in Utah that is disturbed by a mysterious, tattooed man named Aaron who served in Iraq as a veteran; the second is a brutal war that occurs in Iraq; a veteran named Wilson considers his actions and loses himself in the process as he transforms into a total killing machine, and the third takes a mathematician who becomes a victim of the horrifying occupation of Iraq where his life is shattered to pieces. The novel is analyzed according to Galtung’s violence triangle theory, in which the novel demonstrates a lot of events that represent direct, structural, and even cultural violence, direct and structural violence is the main focus of this paper.