My Favorite Short Stories: “Game”
I do not know our target. They do not tell us for which city the bird is targeted. I do not know. That is planning. That is not my responsibility. My responsibility is to watch the console and when certain events take place on the console, turn my key in the lock.
I was born right in the tail end of the Cold War, around the time of Reagan, glasnost and perestroika. By the time I became cognizant of politics, the Berlin Wall had fallen, the Soviet Union was no more, and the omnipresent fear of nuclear annihilation had receded. Despite this, I retained enough cultural consciousness to be aware of the Cold War; aware of the paranoia, the legit fear, the names and the moments. The Cold War, of course, plays a huge role in fiction of the second half of the 20th Century, and this short story embodies it. “Game,” by Donald Barthelme, was published at the height of the Cold War, just two years after Thomas Pynchon’s short story/novella The Crying of Lot 49. Its setting, its content, and its (non-)resolution could only come from the environment of the Cold War.
In “Game,” two Air Force officers are locked in a missile silo, and have been for 133 days “owing to an oversight.” The nature of why the two men are in the silo is never revealed. Instead, Bartheleme uses their predicament as a way to explore the way people behave in isolation, the destruction of norms, and the futility of the Cold War. Barthelme compares the war, and the actions being performed to those of children. The superior officer, Shotwell, is first shown playing jacks, and has been selfishly keeping his partner, the narrator, from playing. To keep each other sane, they sing each other lullabies. Each has tried to launch the missile, but “They had in their infinite patience, in their infinite foresight, in their infinite wisdom had already imagined a man standing over the console with his two arms outstretched, trying to span with his two arms outstretched the distance between the locks.” The narrator’s language, on the cusp of deranged, and repeating and rephrasing further reveal the growing mental breakdown.
Even within the silo, a micro-Cold War brews. “Each of us wears a .45 and each of us is supposed to shoot the other if the other is behaving strangely,” the narrator explains, only to add that he has “a .38 which Shotwell does not know about concealed in my attaché case,” and “Shotwell has a .25 caliber Beretta which I do not know about strapped to his right calf.” They watch either other, and their concealed weapons carefully, while trying to hide behind a facade of normalcy. Shotwell studies for an MBA. The narrator, perhaps worse off, writes on the walls with a diamond engagement ring. Shades of Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb come to mind. Dr. Strangelove, much like “Game” shows the effects of paranoia on people, and their attempts to deal. General Jack D. Ripper’s paranoia causes him to launch nuclear strikes on Russia. Likewise, Shotwell in “Game” implies to the narrator his desire to launch the missile: “He has made certain overtures… It has something to do with the keys, with the locks.”
Ultimately, the lasting strength of “Game” comes not from its position in history, but its ability to echo even now in the age of the “War on Terrorism” the paranoia and fear that can come from isolation, and to reveal the folly of war and humanity. The childish behavior of Shotwell and the narrator reflect upon the same system that put them together in the silo, the builders of the missile and the silo, and whatever events could force them to launch the missile; whether ordered to or not. The same apt comparison can be made now to the machinations of those in power in America.
