It is very interesting to analyze the visuals of Vietnam within “Gods Go Begging” because every stereotypical image of the Vietnam War can be found in this book. We see that the images of death with very visual scenes of gore are present amongst the soldiers in combat. Also, the visuals extend to descriptive scenes of combat, “In the darkness, ephemeral flowers of conclusive flame like red trumpet vines had flashed into bloom, then had receded, to quickly wither shut in accelerated time, in savage salvos of impossible time”(Vea,87). The explicit details that go towards the soldiers and their struggles externally as well as internally are very well portrayed in Vea’s book.
As they are in combat many of them begin the loose their minds, “Trench madness was something he had seen before”(Vea,92). This reference came as they continued to fight on the hill and they felt death was very present.”I just can’t stay another night on this hill. I can’t hold it together. I hate the holes on this hill. We’re digging our own graves. I hate living in this grass”(Vea,90). The soldiers on the hill are in constant panic and war mode that people who have not gone through it would never understand. The father who does accompany the boys in the battle line also begins to loose his mind as he begins to question if their is a god. “The padre raised his eyes to the horizon. In a single night he had acquired combat veteran’s hardened eyes and numbed face”(Vea,92). They realize that they will all die eventually and no one will care.
I think you did a really good job at capturing the atmosphere of Vea’s Vietnam with the passages you included, and it is interesting because each one lends itself to the gothic. The more obvious gothic images/ideas are that of death and gore. The notion of death and decay is often a facet of the gothic genre, as is the dark or night setting you mentioned (“In the darkness”).
The impending sense of death also leads itself to madness, another common feature in gothic. In the genre, it is common for the central character to bring on their own downfall with their madness or obsession, such as in many of Poe’s short stories and other classics like Jekyll & Hyde and Frankenstein. Because the soldiers are so surrounded by death, they become fixated on it and can let that fear consume them (“We’re digging our own graves”, “they all will die eventually and no one will care”).
Another interesting segment you bring up is the idea of the soldiers living on “the hill” on which they are “digging their own graves”. If put in a traditional gothic context, where one lives is often a place where darkness occurs, and, in the case of Poe, represents the mind. In “The Telltale Heart”, “The Fall of the House of Usher”, and “The Black Cat”, Poe connects the home to the mind of the person who inhabits it. If this is true of Vea’s story, the men are driven so trench mad that they cannot bear to stay one more night on the hill; it, like their minds, is rattled with holes and permeated by death. Another connection is that in all of the aforementioned Poe stories, there is a burial within the house. Here, they are “digging their own graves” on the hill they must inhabit.
I also find the inclusion of the padre particularly gothic because he highlights the corruption and shortcomings of the church when he abandons his post and the men, particularly one who desperately wanted confession. While he is not Catholic, Padre has a Latin, and therefore Catholic, undertone; most often, religious corruption of the Catholic Church is shown in the gothic.