While reading All Quiet On The Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque (this time in relation to imperialism and the Great War) I've had an epiphany of sorts. My view on MSR has been completely redefined. Of course it is in the complete opposite direction of any kind of romantic elements. I've found the similarities between Bäumer's Great War and Mulder and Scully's quest to be too similar to do otherwise. (There are spoilers for All Quiet On The Western Front below so you are warned.)

In All Quiet On The Western Front Remarque expertly illustrates the complete consumption of these unlucky soldiers by the war. They know no normal life. The 'Lost Generation' has *only* the war by which to define itself. They have no spouse or family, no job, no friends outside of the war. Paul Bäumer, our protagonist, is the war and the war is Paul Bäumer. When Paul went back home he could only think of returning to those bloody battlefields. There was no connection between the soldier and the civilian. Everything in his being pulled him towards the western front but he remained home because of his sickly mother until his leave expired.

Bäumer wanted to return so much because of his comrades in arms. To call them friends is inadequate. Some lines relating to camaraderie are so similar to The X-Files that it is uncanny.

"We don't talk much, but I believe we have a more complete communion with one another than even lovers have... What does he know of me or I of him? Formerly we should not have had a single thought in common--now we sit and feel in unison. We are so intimate that we do not even speak."

I believe what we are really seeing is an as yet unnamed emotion. It is certainly unknown by the majority of the populous and many of the veterans were most likely unwilling to talk about it. What we have witnessed throughout The X-Files and All Quiet On The Western Front are emotions extracted from situations and shared history rather then personal decision. They are forced upon, or a consequence, of "the war". They are *not* from conscious choice or related to any other more easily categorized emotion. They have no deeper or ulterior meanings.

Categorizing the emotion is difficult though. There is no word for it. Love comes closest but is far to loose in interpretation. Trust is a common theme. You know your comrades have saved you numerous times and you them. It is in a sense a love of your own life extended to them. Understanding is also another portion of the equation. Fellow soldiers are the *only* ones who understand what you are feeling. They are the only ones who understand the horror and sacrifices you've made in the dark quest. The last discernable emotion involved is an 'us against the world' mentality. There is an amazing amount of unity even among the most diverse of groups when you face a common enemy. Rallying around a cause (i.e. Wag the Dog) has been a major unification force throughout history. It can bring a people incredibly close together.

The male/female aspects of The X-Files has slightly off balanced the relationship and sent it into rather strange directions (the HWS for instance) but love is not really the emotion they're feeling, but more of a unity. It would be very easy to confuse the two. Unfortunately, when the war ends there is going to be little reason to remain together. They will always be a part of you, the person or people who held you together in dark times but ultimately there is little beyond that.

REPLY FROM LONETHINKER: Mulder and Scully as Paul and Katt

Thanks for bringing up this parallel again. (Maybe we'll even get some of these guys go break down and go check out *All Quiet at the library.) As I've written these characters lately, I've had a similar reaction.

Re your comments that they have been consumed by the war, that Paul is the war and the war is Paul, and his yearning, when he's home on leave, to return to his companions at the front:

Part of this phenomenon--a very common reaction, BTW--is that the soldier has been through an experience that nobody in the 'normal' world can even begin to comprehend. This was very common among Vietnam returnees; in fact, there were people who reenlisted or found some other excuse/reason to go back because home had become like a weird Twilight Zone after a year of such intense experience. Others simply struggled through in their new-old surroundings, hating the war but wishing they were still there because the war was peopled with others who understood them. Deb in my story *Reunion typifies a lot of what returnees went though, and what was most jolting to these people was that they'd spent an entire year with their uppermost goal being to return to 'the world' they had known, but when they got here it was like a strange nightmare--the world they'd known was gone, and principally because of how they themselves had been changed by their experiences. [If you want to get a feeling for the weirdness of this situation, go check out the old movie *Julia and Julia, about a woman (Kathleen Turner in a really great performance) who keeps slipping between two 'realities'. It's an Italian production, and though the situation isn't strictly analogous, it *will*--definitely--give you the feeling of disorientation/confusion involved.]

This importance of this common ground factor can't be underestimated. It is, I believe, what made Paul want to go back to the front, the reason he was so uncomfortable and out of his element at home, where outward conditions were much more comfortable but he no longer felt any connection. I think it's the reason he was so irritated by his father's bragging about him and showing him off to his friends--because his father had no idea--not an inkling--of what it was he had gone through or what war was really like.

Mulder and Scully are in a similar situation. They *are* in a war, but they're the only two soldiers on this side of it and nobody--nobody else--knows what they're going through. Only they know the dangers. Only they have seen the evidence. Only they feel the real cost of continuing the campaign. This creates an incredibly strong common experience that no one else shares, and it draws them together. They also, as Littljoe points out, are in the position of guarding/saving each other's lives. They have to trust each other and they do--they know they can. They are with each other during the most excruciating times of emotional stress. All this builds a strong fabric of unity. It becomes their whole emotional foundation, the thing that keeps them going.

The ending of the quest/war would definitely present a challenge to Mulder and Scully's partnership, not because they don't really care about each other, but because so much of their foundation is woven of elements that are by definition part of the conflict they face. They are different people with different styles. Much as we may not want to face it, they could easily go separate directions without the circumstances in place that bind them together now. Which isn't to say that this bond would not be the most poignant, the most meaningful they will ever have had...and then again, as Yoda said, "always in motion is the future." Some circumstance we never could have anticipated could arise and change them enough to send this partnership off in some completely new and unexpected direction...

REPLY FROM ZUFFY: In defense of the MSR

Call me deluded, but here goes: I like the war analogy & All Quiet in particular. I think the factors you name powerfully explain the tenacity of the relationship between two people who are opposite in such important ways. And I agree with the immense power of such experiences. But I am leery of reducing an extraordinary relationship to only one of its aspects. It is not just what they are doing together that unites them, it is what they do *for each other. Their dependence on one another applies not just to dealing with the external enemy; it also comes in dealing with themselves - i.e. Mulder dealing with Mulder and Scully dealing with Scully. The way they pull and tug each other are not smooth elements of the relationship yet they provide a glue that I do not think their common work alone provides. Therefore I am more hopeful than you that as their mission in life may change, the glue may yet remain.

Mulder does things for Scully's psyche and Scully for Mulder's that they do not always consciously want yet these things have proven extraordinarily important. On several occasions Mulder has made it clear that he would just like her to agree with him; he does not always want her contentiousness. The way she keeps him intellectually honest is hard and painful for him. Yet, she forces him to be more than he would otherwise be. She saves him from slipping into glibness and isolation, from being broken by CSM, from exclusion by those who would banish him. She grounds him by the example of her integrity (a flame that burns bright in him) and by the way her presence in his life fires some of the best elements of his own character. She forces him to confront himself in a way that Phoebe or Diana never could. Likewise, the way Mulder forces her to stare straight in the face of the limits of knowledge and logic (those core things for her) sometimes shakes her from the inside out. His passion and sense of meaning have resonated in her soul and she grasps at the exhilarating but dangerous imagination that their partnership gives her. She can reach far beyond herself with him. At the same time, he gives her a freedom to be herself that is extraordinary. In their disagreements, he pushes her to be herself and to see his POV at the same time, an amazingly discordant request. He does not want the agreement of a Scully who is no longer Scully. In asking her to believe, he also asks her to *feel more. This is, as we have seen, one of the hardest things for her. As viewers, we see the things that they give one another in the context of their X-File cases, but I believe that what they give is independent of those cases. Those things operate in both the particular context of what happens to be going on, and in a crucial deeper sense of life, pure and simple. On the level of what it means to be "me."

They generate sparks of life and meaning in each other in almost secret ways. By this I mean that each of them is to some degree unaware of the effect he or she has on the other's deepest sense of self and well-being. This is one of the mysteries of loving someone, I think. We may grasp why we love but we don't always understand why we are loved back. We saw that unawareness in the hallway scene, for example, when Mulder poured out his confession. Scully was stunned. Scully has not confessed in the same way, and I simply don't know whether intuitive Mulder has a clearer sense of his place in her psyche. The depth of these things gives each of them a profound ability to hurt the other because that hurt can zero in on the core of being. To a significant degree, I think their professional partnership actually *dampens the articulation and verbal exploration of their bond, as they seek not to let other things they might feel interfere with their jobs, their mission. As they seek to avoid exploring these emotions. But it does not mean that such a bond cannot or should not exist or might not develop if allowed.

Back to the military analogy. I am not rejecting it at all. I have read All Quiet, poetry of the period, and "The Things They Carried" (Tim O'Brien, on Vietnam), among other things. Surely their isolation together has created a bond through their common efforts and a special kind of bond through experience. And yes, they will absolutely put their lives in the other's hands. None of these things can be discounted. Still, if we can start with the battlefield analogy, we should not *end there. Analogies have the virtue of crystallizing part of the truth…. but only part. Despite their common mission, M&S have differed strongly about aliens, the conspiracy, the paranormal and the monstrous. Their union and unity depart from that of wartime: it is rooted in the turmoil of difference as well as in the common goal. It is rooted in an almost paradoxical *satisfaction with that ferment. Yes, they would surely each admit that their constant disagreements have advanced their common goal, yet the inherent tension in their points of view combined with the freedom each has to walk away from the quest means that staying together is based on a level of personal commitment a little beyond the military analogy. Why do they each risk death to keep each other safe? Yes, loyalty and commitment (soldiers do this, too). Yes, too, that each believes the particular gifts of the other are crucial to their common success. Yes, the place each has in the other's soul. Yes, therefore, that each is unsure whether life without the other is worth living…quest or no quest.

Well, I agree with others that I find it a little hard to picture M&S in a "normal life." The series is not set up to let us see that side of them. What do they talk about at lunch on a slow day? How does Mulder deal with his dry cleaner? Does Scully shout when the mechanic's bill comes in at twice estimate? We don't know. We don't have a complete picture. But the elements of their relationship that go deep into the psyche allow me to think that even at the end of the quest, supposing they survive it, that bond *can find expression in a continuing relationship. As CSue says, loving someone is a decision you make again and again, it is a commitment that you form and for which you find new ways of expression. Many couples fall in love in one set of circumstances (say in college or on the job) and then find themselves going through different "lives" together: a shift in profession may dampen the earlier common interests, unemployment casts one into dependence, relocation leaves one partner emotionally adrift, serious illness shakes the certainty of always having the other person, children profoundly change the stakes, obligations, and issues in a relationship, and so forth. As life changes there are new things to do, to confront, to debate, define, suffer, and solve. Enduring relationships move on and grow--or shrink. I simply do not believe that the profound understanding we have seen between M&S starts and stops with their mission statement or their memory of past adventures. Unless CC simply decides to choose to trash the relationship, I think there is room for hope.

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