Literary: The Man Without a Country

Idea Prompt for 10/12/2009

SOURCE: The classic short story, “The Man Without a Country.” It’s not my intent to synopsize it, but you can check it out at the library, or read it online at Project Gutenberg.

By the way, this is not the Vonnegut collection of essays, A Man Without a Country.

WHAT WAS I THINKING… The story I’m talking about was written by Edward Everett Hale in 1863. Hale may have had a forgettable career, but his blood connection to über-patriot Nathan Hale, and the timely topic of Principle Punished, make this story worth repeating. Plus, it’s in the Public Domain…

A quick summary: Innocent man is accused of consorting with treasonous types. Denounces country. Exiled to sea, doomed to never set foot on his homeland again. Repents on his deathbed. (Not entirely accurate, but close enough for our purposes.)

IMAGINE… how you might update the classic novella “Man Without a Country”

…THE POSSIBILITIES:

#1: It’s the 1950s and and a Naval officer is falsely accused of being a Communist. He rashly denounces the country he has served all his adult life and is sentenced to wander the oceans… in a submarine. The entire plot could be lifted wholesale from the original, with Alger Hiss stading in for Aaron Burr.

#2: Focus on the ‘never-set-foot-on-American-soil-again’ aspect of the story and set the tale in Canada, where a draft dodger from the Vietnam War era is not allowed back into America. He’s in his 60s and has a terminal disease, but he can never go home again.

#3: Turn this into a warped G. W. Bush-era tale of Vice-Presidential vindictiveness. A former supporter of Bush denounces the President’s actions in Iraq. Cheney engineers the man’s kidnapping and spirits him away to an off-shore oil rig, from where he’ll never be able to return to America.

THE EXERCISE: I’m sure you could come up with a couple more variations of this classic. It doesn’t seem like anyone else has jumped at the chance to update this 146-year-old short story, so it’s all yours!

NOTE: If you’d like to develop these Ideas further, just leave a Comment and share your work.