The Soldier as Good Samaritan: bonding with the enemy in John Pearman's The Radical Soldier's Tale

Abstract

This article uses the other and the idea of othering to study male bonding and self-identification in John Pearman's The Radical Soldier's Tale. Instead of strengthening bonds of institutionalized male comradeship based on the exclusion of the Indian enemy, the radical soldier John Pearman, a working-class man who occupies positions of liminality in British imperial self-other distinctions, claims that being a man does not mean rejecting the different. In fact, the soldier-writer develops a bond of affection with Indian culture and political causes that not only breaks these unchanging and rigid binary opposites, but also helps to redefine his identity as a working-class soldier and articulate what this article suggests as the Good Samaritan myth. Particular attention is given to the distinction between friendship and comradeship, as it conditions Pearman's attitudes towards the enemy-other and his representation of male bonding itself.