Rite of Passage: An Allegory of Military Recruitment

The Unremarkable Threshold

The door leading into the recruitment center didn't really attract attention in any way. Nothing about the front of the office stood out as anything special or out of the ordinary; the wall of tinted plate glass and the black metal of the doorframe and handle matched the outer decor of all the shops in this nondescript strip mall that occupied the thirty-three hundred block of Needham Avenue. Even the narrow strip of cardboard at the top of the window bearing the words "U.S. Army Recruitment Office" was rather bland, and the eye easily traveled from the bright yellow sign of the tobacco shop on the office's left side to the flowery script of the Indian restaurant to its right without even registering the militant presence in between. From all outward appearances, then, this office did not exactly demonstrate the pinnacle of military recruitment marketing skill or effort, and passing into the air-conditioned, fluorescently lit room beyond this storefront was less momentous than might have been expected.

The Three Desks and Their Occupants

There were three desks in the room. Two of them occupied the back corners, flanking a door that was just as unstriking as any of the external features of the recruitment office — and yet, at the same time, carried a greater aura of mystery, being opaque and made of painted wood rather than tinted glass. Behind the desk to the right of this door sat an aging man whose long-grayed temples and wrinkled brow were offset by the crispness of his olive green uniform and the sharpness of the shoulders that filled it. Despite the severity of his posture — his chest formed an exact right angle to the desktop at all times — there was something paternal about this man. He cared for the young people he sent off into battle, his eyes seemed to say, but he would not take any nonsense from them either.

The Absent Hero and the Weight of His Artifacts

The desk on the other side of the door was at this time unoccupied, yet the medals arranged in a velvet display case on the wall behind it and the photographs of posts from around the world arranged on the desktop and facing outward gave the impression that this was the seat of an important and influential personage — one who could testify to the merits of serving one's country with considerable objectivity. His absence actually made his effect and influence that much stronger, as the visions of glory and honor reflected in the eyes of the newly entered observer were untainted by association with any imperfect human form.

The medals and photographs spoke for themselves of the intrinsic merit of military service and demonstrated the gap in conviction that dwelled somewhere in the twenty feet of space between the door leading out and the desk itself. Crossing to that desk, these artifacts seemed to say, required both submission and opposition — and both of them in extreme degrees.