Siedem małych słów. Obraz wojny wietnamskiej w komiksie Kaznodzieja Gartha Ennisa i Steve’a Dillona

Vietnam War is one of the most traumatic experiences in contemporary history of the United States. This cold war conflict is constantly present in American popular culture. It became the theme of numerous pieces of literature, music, film (documentary as well as fiction), of computer games and comics. The aim of Wojciech Lewandowski’s chapter Seven Little Words. The Image of Vietnam War in a comic book “Preacher” by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon is to present the Vietnam War in contemporary popular culture as exemplified in the comic book Preacher by writer Garth Ennis and artist Steve Dillon, issued between 1995 and 2000. The writer of the series, renowned for his love of war stories, spins the tale of this conflict with extraordinary attempts at avoiding the old clichés, while incorporating the typical elements of the Vietnam War narration. These include the knowledge of the battlefields, relations between soldiers and the morale, impact of the war on the psyche of soldiers, the image of the enemy, the motif of patrolling the jungle and the issue of the difficult return to the home country. The authors, referring to the above mentioned themes of the typical tale of the war in Indochina, created a touching image of a soldier’s life in Vietnam and after the return home. Their story is abundantly inspired by earlier film and comics portraits of the Vietnam conflict as well as by classical war tales. Preacher by Ennis and Dillon, in its issues dealing with Vietnam War is an intriguing study of the individual fate of people impacted by participating in a publicly perceived controversial and immoral war. It vividly exposes how individual lives change when influenced by traumatic experiences and indicates the values that enable one to survive the hell of the war.