Days Without End

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2016

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-5

Chapters 6-9

Chapters 10-14

Chapters 15-19

Chapters 20-23

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Invocation of “Queer”

In Days Without End, Barry uses the term “queer” as a descriptor approximately 40 times. The term takes on multiple uses within the text, some of which are definitions that a soldier in Thomas’s era would have been familiar with, while some adhere more to the contemporary notion of “queering” something, or resisting its heteropatriarchal, cissexist, white supremacist, or other hegemonic, restrictive iteration. The term “queer” has a laden history in LGTBQ+ culture, both as a slur used in conjunction with anti-LGTBQ+ violence and rhetoric, and as a reclaimed term used by the LGTBQ+ community. The time period of the novel largely predates the use of “queer” as a slur, which came into prominence in the late 19th century in conjunction with the widely publicized Oscar Wilde trials (Clarke, Mollie. “‘Queer’ History: A History of Queer.” The National Archives Blog, 2021). Historical fiction, however, layers the past of its history and the present of its writing; Barry uses such layering to deploy the term “queer” in a novel about a soldier whose changing identity regarding gender and self is a queering of the traditional archetypes of solider protagonists.

Barry employs the term “queer” to mean ironic, such as in the scene in which Thomas and John depart Daggsville to no fanfare, despite their status as legends in the miner community: “And the queer thing was, Daggsville was deserted [the morning we left], and no one to cheer us away” (25). He moreover uses “queer” to mean incomprehensible, such as when Thomas thinks of Wellington on his deathbed: “He was a queer sort of man alright. Mostly cruel and thoughtless but there was the seam of something else unnamed” (87). Barry also, however, uses “queer” in a more modern sense, in which he frames queer feeling as something that resists the way that things are “supposed” to be, doing so in a manner that creates a more expansive, better world. “There’s no soldier don’t have a queer little spot in his wretched heart for his enemy, that’s just a fact” (92). The queer sympathy that Barry frames Thomas and his fellow soldiers feeling for the Native Americans they battle has counter-hegemonic possibility and suggests the queerness in men’s hearts may allow them to resist the racist hatred they are encouraged to develop by society around them.

Famine and Hunger

Famine and hunger are recurring threats in the novel, framed as predators who do not discriminate when it comes to their victims. Thomas, as a survivor of the Irish famine, is keenly observant of what the conditions can do to an individual and to a group; of all the things he experiences in his life, the starvation conditions of the ship journey from Ireland to Canada is one he is least willing to discuss. His reticence on this subject indicates the depth of the horrors he has seen in the famine, particularly in the context of his willingness to discuss the horrors of war. This experience creates an abiding fear in Thomas; when the American army, crossing the plains early in the winter, begin to starve, he thinks, “There was no game below the mountains this time and soon our bellies were gnawed by hunger. It was weeks of a journey and now we were a-feared of what hunger might do. A hunger knower like myself was a-feared more than most. I seen the cold deeds of hunger” (49). Thomas, who recalls Moments of Humanity in War even in the most violent scenarios, considers hunger a threat that wipes the humanity out of mankind.

The novel also posits famine as something that creates a sort of equality between people, albeit a temporary one, binding enemies together. When hunger strikes, it harms the Native Americans and the soldiers alike: “Now it was inching into autumn and those treaty Indians had to make way in their villages for that old murderer called Famine. That filthy dark-hearted scrawny creature that wants the ransom of lives” (62). Unlike men, whom Thomas sees as fighting for understandable if not strictly moral reasons, he characterizes Famine as a force of evil, killing maliciously. Famine works, for Thomas, as a metaphor for true cruelty. When Caught-His-Horse-First fights the American army after they have slain his family, he does so with greater vitriol than he previously possessed, causing Thomas to observe, “Famine has come into the heart of this man” (91). Though Days Without End is largely a wartime novel that is critical of war, combat between humans is not characterized as the most malevolent force in the text; instead, Barry emphasizes the damage that hunger, both literal and emotional, can do to man.

Scouts

The use of scouts from various Native American tribes by the American army recurs as a motif in the novel. By emphasizing the role of Indigenous scouts in enabling the American army to navigate the unfriendly and unfamiliar landscape of the Great Plains, Barry underscores the irony and hypocrisy central to how these wars were waged. Barry shows the faithlessness of the American army in the scene in which two scouts are shot for desertion after returning to Fort Laramie following a long absence. Thomas notes that there is not sufficient common language in order to communicate their “crimes” to the scouts, who are astonished to find themselves facing execution. That this execution takes place even after the scouts help the Americans—often to track other groups of Native peoples—highlights the genocidal ideation behind the American Indian Wars by illustrating the thin pretense required for Americans to consider Native persons to be “deserving” of death.