SOURCE: “Dualism and Doubling in Wright Morris's War Games,” in The Centennial Review, Vol. XXXVII, No. 2, Spring, 1993, pp. 415-28.

In the following essay, Wydeven discusses the use of the doppelganger in Morris's fiction, and especially its use in his novel War Games.

[Colonel Foss] slept, … and he dreamt that he carried a small black bag which contained the leg, the arm, and the tongue of a person who was following him.

War Games (74)

Where the double is, the orphan is never far away, with secrecy and terror over all.

Karl Miller, Doubles (39)

I

At the heart of The Field of Vision (1956), perhaps Wright Morris's most representative novel (and winner of the National Book Award), there is a character who refuses to speak and whose thoughts we are never given, yet whose presence in the novel is essential. This character, Paula Kahler, is presented by Morris as having undergone...