Days Without End

In Days Without End, Barry uses the term “queer” as a descriptor approximately 40 times. The term takes on multiple uses within the text, some of which are definitions that a soldier in Thomas’s era would have been familiar with, while some adhere more to the contemporary notion of “queering” something, or resisting its heteropatriarchal, cissexist, white supremacist, or other hegemonic, restrictive iteration. The term “queer” has a laden history in LGTBQ+ culture, both as a slur used in conjunction with anti-LGTBQ+ violence and rhetoric, and as a reclaimed term used by the LGTBQ+ community. The time period of the novel largely predates the use of “queer” as a slur, which came into prominence in the late 19th century in conjunction with the widely publicized Oscar Wilde trials (Clarke, Mollie. “‘Queer’ History: A History of Queer.” The National Archives Blog, 2021). Historical fiction, however, layers the past of its history and the present of its writing; Barry uses such layering to deploy the term “queer” in a novel about a soldier whose changing identity regarding gender and self is a queering of the traditional archetypes of solider protagonists.

Barry employs the term “queer” to mean ironic, such as in the scene in which Thomas and John depart Daggsville to no fanfare, despite their status as legends in the miner community: “And the queer thing was, Daggsville was deserted [the morning we left], and no one to cheer us away” (25).