Ashton Bradford: Student reading choice 3

 I decided to read the novelization of the movie Hacksaw Ridge, and realized that it is a lot more spiritual than I remember. The book/movie consists of a lot of prayer and hope, which is a quiet contrast to the dark and religious undertone I use to think it had. The book/movie is about a young man that almost kills his brother and was raised in an uber religious and abusive household. This led him to enlist however pledge to never shoot a firearm, as it is against his moral and religious code to hurt and kill. I was reading this book and was thinking to myself, does war count as an axis mundi? 

War is often how many people have spiritual encounters, and is how many can change religions and start to pray more. Axis Mundi  is a concept that some place has connections to the spiritual realm, let it be because of history or experiences. War is not a place, rather its an action. When someone goes to war, they aren't going to a place, they're going to perform an action. Therefore, war is not an axis mundi, but is a liminality in which people are in the middle of a change in their life. The person that they come out as is often not the same as the person that came in, thus labeling it as a transitional or liminal space. In these times of change, connections to the spiritual realm can often be made and can change a person completely and utterly. These changes are deeply embedded, however in this novel, the main character does not go through a growth in the war. What changed the main character was his household, his education, his church, and the bludgeoning of his brother. What the character does is keep his morals while serving his country in a positive way while in war, becoming more confident in his abilities however not changing. The novel is unique in which the character practiced religion like he did back at home, not changing the depth of his prayers nor the commonality of them. In typical war literature, there is a change in the person during war due to it being a common liminal space, however this book is unique, hence why it caught my attention.