Morris, Wright - Joseph J. Wydeven (essay date 1993)

Joseph J. Wydeven (essay date 1993)

SOURCE: “Dualism and Doubling in Wright Morris's War Games,” in The Centennial Review, Vol. XXXVII, No. 2, Spring, 1993, pp. 415-28.

[In the following essay, Wydeven discusses the use of the doppelganger in Morris's fiction, and especially its use in his novel War Games.]

[Colonel Foss] slept, … and he dreamt that he carried a small black bag which contained the leg, the arm, and the tongue of a person who was following him.

War Games (74)

Where the double is, the orphan is never far away, with secrecy and terror over all.

Karl Miller, Doubles (39)

I

At the heart of The Field of Vision (1956), perhaps Wright Morris's most representative novel (and winner of the National Book Award), there is a character who refuses to speak and whose thoughts we are never given, yet whose...

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