An Essay on C.J. Hauser’s Short Story “bangana”

An Essay on C.J. Hauser’s Short Story “Bangana”

Can you imagine killing someone 3000 miles away by the press of a button? The modernization of war and drone warfare are the focus in the short story “Bangana” by C.J. Hauser from 2014 that is set in the U.S. The story is about the ex-pilot Alicia, who now works as a drone operator. Bangana shows the critical consequences associated with drone warfare and how they affect the individual.

The protagonist Alicia finds it difficult to live her life, both as a drone operator who directs kills and a family mom. She is on a mission controlling a drone in Afghanistan, where she is supposed to surveil a warehouse. She can’t concentrate and constantly wonders, who the man “Daddio” who lives next to the warehouse is. She compares her own family with “Daddio’s” and wonders what he is doing and why. “The man who lives there, he has some goats. He has some kids. He has a wife who usually stays inside. His sons play soccer all day. One of them is good at it. The other one is too little, like Bug, to be good at anything yet.” (Hauser, C.J. 2014, P. 1 L. 34-36) She sympathizes with the family and follows it with interest. She even misinterprets the angry reaction from “Daddio” towards his son, because he can’t hit a football. Then she observes a car arriving, and she realizes that the car is the reason why he got angry and not because of the ball. Some of the newly arrived people are identified as terrorists. When asked, she doesn’t try to convince her superiors that “Daddio” is innocent and that all he has been doing is watching his goats, digging vegetables and watching his goats. Where she moments ago almost seemed to care for the family, she now doesn’t care at all. The kill is directed and executed. This shows how easy it can be to suppress your human emotions when you’re fighting in a war, without being their physically.

C.J. Hauser uses the setting to present the dire consequences of drone warfare, “Daddio lowers his arm and goes inside. (…) Something buried in his garden. Could be suspicious. So I keep watching. I log it. I hover and I circle. Warehouse, road, shacks. Nothing. Warehouse, road, shacks. Nothing. Soccer. Nothing. Goats. A whole lot of nothing. Bug was at day care when he decided to crawl off to the border of the playground and start eating holly berries, which, it turns out, are poisonous. (…) But that day care had the best record in the county. I did my research.” (Hauser, C. J. 2014, P. 2 L. 49-57) Physically Alicia is in the U.S. but Psychically she is in Afghanistan. The area she is observing is desolate, even for Afghanistan and there is nothing of interest in the area. This description indicates that she is depressed about her job and she thinks about it as if it doesn’t matter. At the same time, she reflects about her son and how he ate fifty-five poisonous berries. The constant