Visual and artistic representations of contemporary wars in Double Vision's pastoral context

In the light of Pat Barker's Double Vision (2003), based on the narrative's pastoral construct, this study aims to explore the representative forms of pains of others depicted through visual media, photography, art within the context of twentieth-century wars in Iraq, Bosnia and Afghanistan, and to investigate how the protagonists deal with ethical consequences of witnessing and showing others' pains. The pastoral space and pastoral mode of the narrative, which reverberate death and destruction of wars, prove that the narrative's pastoral is not an Arcadian construct providing an escape from the rigors of wars. On the contrary, as the theoretical framework, the pastoral equips the narrative with an ethical approach that reveals the realities of war and the sufferings of humanity. Barker's pastoral construct emerges as the basic constituent that embodies vulnerability, mortality of humanity and trauma. Further, the pastoral methodology corresponds to the protagonists' moral attitudes towards visual and artistic representations of violence and suffering, for the reason that both perspectives intend to reach the truth of the issue of seeing others' pains and aftermaths of war. As a protest against the anesthetizing effect of excessive image-flow in mass media, the protagonists' personal and artistic responses to visual images; photographs of war and violence have become a substitution for pastoral lament. That way, artistically and ethically oriented protagonists honor those who have suffered and lost their lives during wars, but their pains were left unrecognized. Key words: Literature and War, Pastoral, Pastoral Mode, Visual Representations, War Photography, Art, Ethics