For this month's post, I have a review/analysis of Dead Wake I wrote for AP Lang a couple weeks ago, so grab your best dress because today we're going formal! The rest of the year, I'll have my usual rants and raves, but I want to give myself a little time to adjust to my schedule before starting any posts.
Without further ado, Dead Wake...
Erik Larson has become the nonfiction writer for fiction readers. His detailed deep-dives into historical events like murder at the Chicago World's Fair (The Devil in the White City), Winston Churchill during the blitz of London (The Splendid and the Vile), and the 1933 German-American embassy (In the Garden of Beasts) capture everyday readers in ways few nonfiction historical books can. His 2013 novel Dead Wake, an in-depth analysis of every letter, every order, and every moment that lead to the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915, enthralls readers all the same. Surprisingly, unlike many exciting historical studies, Larson doesn't often present an angle or argument to convince the reader of good guys and bad guys (although it pushes its way in at times); instead, he spends the 300-plus pages exploring every side of the situation, from the U-boat logs documenting the sinking to the individual lives of Lusitania passengers.
Dead Wake follows a few different storylines. Primarily, Larson talks about what happens on the ship itself. The book discusses the lives of passengers (some of whom had nearly sailed on the Titanic, including Alfred Vanderbilt); the captain, Turner, one of the most accomplished captains in all of Cunard; and any slow-downs, including last-minute additions from another ship, the Cameronia, and a tour for Turner's niece. The Lusitania could speed across the Atlantic faster than any other ship at the time, with an average of a whopping 26 knots, but during its final crossing, Cunard secretly ordered Captain Turner to use only three of the ship's four engines, adding an entire day onto the voyage. Dead Wake also travels with the German U-boat that eventually sank the Lusitania, documenting its logs and the requirements for German captains, who were ranked based on tonnage sunk (making the Lusitania an ideal target). Great Britain's top-secret codebreakers, Room 40, make appearances as they track German ships and decide whether or not to act on classified knowledge regarding the Lusitania—as time runs out, the lives of nearly 2,000 people rest in their hands. The final plotline follows President Woodrow Wilson, who faces several battles: politically, the country is tearing itself apart over how America should act in regards to the war, and personally, he has fallen in love again after the death of his wife Ellen.
The real purpose behind the creation of Dead Wake was the desire for modern-day Americans to understand just how huge of an impact this tragedy had, not only on international relations but also on real, ordinary people. The book uses dialogue and everyday moments on board to ground the massive amount of death in reality. For example, on page 194, Larson describes an instance where two little girls try to help a worker paint a lifeboat. "[The painter, Morton,] was hard at work when he heard the sound of small shoes charging toward him, and looked out… to see two girls intently watching… 'I could not help thinking what lovely children they were and how beautifully dressed,' Morton wrote" (193-194). Later, Larson gives the exact body count when the two little girls' corpses were recovered. First, he humanized the children and created a connection between them and the reader, and only then does he reveal their deaths, increasing the emotional impact.
Larson uses minute details to turn statistics into real drownings of children, family, and friends, writing, "The worst were those situations where a passenger was expected to be on a different ship but… had ended up on the Lusitania, as was the case with the passengers of the Cameronia… includ[ing] Margaret and James Shineman, newlyweds from Oil City, Wyoming, who suddenly found themselves aboard the fastest, most luxurious ship in service, for their journey to Scotland to visit Margaret's family. The visit was to be a surprise. Both were killed" (300). Larson first introduces the Shinemans' names, lives, and early joy before switching to the short, hard sentence "both were killed" to emphasize how very human all of the losses were.
Erik Larson also challenges the reader to consider alternative aspects of the sinking by giving the German U-boat's perspective. Dead Wake regularly switches to U-20 (the German U-boat) and its captain, Schwieger. It doesn't use hard, biased language to turn the reader against Schwieger like other American studies of the Lusitania might; instead, it presents the facts and the people behind them like it does for every other location in the book. It quotes many of Schwieger's captain logs, as well as journal entries and letters from his crew. Their bravery, despite being against America during World War I, is recognized. U-boats were notoriously dangerous and hard to manage, spread by stories of U-boats striking mines and later being discovered with "vivid evidence of the kind of death submariners most feared… The scratches on the steel walls, the corpses' torn finger-nails, the blood-stains on their clothes and on the wall, bore all too dreadful witness" (123). That sort of brutal death was always possible on U-boats, and after two days of sailing, Schwieger was "no longer able to communicate with his superiors… wholly on his own" (124). In Larson's painting of the Lusitania's tragedy, it would be easy to make Schwieger nothing more than a villain, but he instead opts for a fuller version of the truth.
Sometimes, however, Larson can be too rosy in his attempts to show every side of the story, especially with President Woodrow Wilson. In Larson's book, Wilson is "a great man" (23) with a good heart. He's introduced with the deep grief of the death of his wife, slanting him in a sympathetic light. As the country's and the world's problems are slowly introduced, there is an underlying idea that all of it is out of his control. No responsibility, it can feel, ever lies on Wilson, despite him having more responsibility than anyone in the entire country. His wife is dead, and he is "a heartbreaking scene" (23), so how could he deal with politics? Dead Wake never so much as mentions Wilson reintroducing racial segregation in the capital or his choice to actively ignore women's protests for the right to vote, even though those issues dominated America at the time. By many modern standards of acceptance and equality, Wilson was not "a great man" (23), but nowhere is that idea considered. It's even avoided when discussing his infatuation with a close friend, Edith Galt. Larson writes their friendship-to-marriage to be nothing less than a joyful romantic comedy. They take drives around DC and share books with secret notes; she is described as "a heaven—haven—sanctuary… her presence helped him clarify his thoughts about the nation's trials" (109). Suddenly, with that final addition, she shares his presidential responsibilities, despite having only the connection of a close friend—a personal friend, not a professional one, who, at the end of the day, should not be roped into his job.
On its own, that connection might not be such a problem, but when Larson pairs it with the language surrounding Wilson's proposal later in the book, it feels wrong. When he proposes, she rejects him, which "casts him into a state akin to grief" (210-211). He handles it by writing her extensive, creepy letters sharing his belief "that she would come to love him" (211). These letters aren't in any way depicted as terrifying or disrespectful; no, they are "impassioned postscripts" (211). When Edith's so-called friend shames and guilts her for not wanting a life married to the President of the United States, she isn't manipulating Edith—she's only worried because "some happiness was coming into his life… and now [Edith is] breaking his heart" (177). Her sexism was showing, but Larson allows it to control the narrative with calmness, never once pointing it out. In fact, he frames their eventual marriage in a positive light by focusing on Wilson's perspective, writing, "Wilson had cause for cheer… [when] Edith at last agreed to marry him" (332). "At last," in this context, holds a positive connotation, like this was the summation of some great and beautiful love story when, according to the facts presented by Dead Wake itself, the marriage was really the effect of a woman pressured into a life she didn't want in order to keep a man comfortable.
Overall, Dead Wake is an unusual nonfiction book, so close to fiction in its suspense and details that a reader could accidentally call it a novel. Larson does his best to show every side of the story, although personal bias inevitably leaks in. Still, it is well-written and entertaining, perfect for a reader intimidated by the nonfiction shelves in the library. Until next time, keep reading, readers.