Dead White Chickens and Other Examples of Cognitive Dissonance in Kayla Williams’ Biography Love My Rifle More Than You

“We go on. Suddenly they’re waving dead white chickens. None of us have ever encountered anyone waving a dead white chicken. None of us knows what it means. Are they offering us something to eat? Are they making an obscure reference to something about Americans, the United States, our invasion? Is it a gesture of resistance or of mockery? What the hell is going on?”(95). Kayla Williams had a more difficult job than she understood. She was trained as a linguistic specialist and sent to Iraq, ostensibly to listen to broadcasts and pass along anything relevant and translate when the Army needed to talk to the locals. Cognitive dissonance is present when two cognitions (pieces of knowledge, such as ‘apples are fruit’ or ‘my favorite color is blue’ or ‘the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776’) are in conflict. Translation is an example of cognitive dissonance – one has to think in two languages at once. But how do you translate dead white chickens? Williams described the incident in terms of cognitive dissonance; these smiling people waved dead white chickens to show support, to mock the troops, to show evidence of chemical warfare, to invite them for dinner…believing all of that at once prompted half of the convoy to laugh hysterically. Although Williams recognized this example of cognitive dissonance, her biography is full of examples whose proximate cause is the very structure and protocol of the Untied States Military.

My favorite example concerns the deployment orders. Williams was assigned to the 101st Airborne Division, stationed at Fort Campbell, waiting for orders to deploy to Iraq. As Williams recounted:” “Quit lying to us! A duffel bag with all our extra gear has already gone to the Middle East. We’ve been told to pack personal hygiene equipment for six months! We went to Wal-Mart and spent three hundred dollars on binoculars, batteries, cameras, books, and a solar shower! Extra fucking everything! And you’re trying to tell us we’re not going anywhere?” “Roger that. There is no deployment order for the division.” Then the deployment order for the division was announced on CNN” (62). When my ex-husband was in the Army, he was supply personnel stationed at Fort Bragg, one of the rapid-deployment stations. I knew he was on his way to Haiti for Operation: Restore Hope seven hours before he did (officially). So, in direct opposition to the lesson in critical thinking Williams and her fellow soldiers received in college, they are told to disbelieve the evidence of their own senses and experience in favor of what those with higher rank tell them.

According to the cognition of Chain of Command, those of higher rank are supposed to protect and defend those under their command with their superior self-discipline (read – never show emotion), training and experience. This cognition pairs with the cognition that one must always respect rank. Williams encountered dissonance when she served under a series of ranking officers who were incompetent, insensitive and too sensitive, and did not care about the soldiers they were theoretically supposed to protect. The military had a built-in way of insulting those of higher rank – “retreat into my shell of protocol” (91). Williams, a woman who has shown herself to be a caring and sensitive individual, resolved her cognitive dissonance in this regard by accepting the cognition that ranking officers should have the described traits in order to protect ‘their soldiers’ and rejecting the idea that all officers deserve their rank. When she retreated to protocol with SSG Moss and Moss cried, Williams’ account reveals the change in attitude forced by the necessary resolution: “The Bitch. She’s crying in front of a subordinate, and I have even less respect for her now, if that’s possible. You never cry in front of a subordinate” (91). In other instances, Williams had a friend, Zoe, whose commanding officer fled to safety before ordering his soldiers to safety, an act which resulted in a letter of reprimand for the officer (245). SSG Moss continued to be incompetent in ways that could get Williams and her team killed. A later ranking officer accused Williams of being angry with her because she did not care about learning about the technical aspects and equipment of the job, most of which relied on those aspects and equipment (267). This was acceptable to the military, which had stationed this officer in Iraq when she did not even know where Iraq was located on a world map.

When she wasn’t dealing with officers whose ignorance was potentially lethal to her and her team, Williams experienced cognitive dissonance in her role as translator. She accompanied soldiers on hunts for weapons and had to simultaneously reassure the terrified locals and the twitchy soldiers that everything was okay. She told the locals that the scary soldiers with rifles pointed at them were, in fact, here to protect them but must also hunt for hidden weapons. She told the soldiers that the locals were peaceful people and the shouting and stepping close were part of Arabic culture. When traveling, people were potentially allies and enemies at once. Common trash could be a cover for explosive devices. Prisoners might be harmless natives or terrorists – the Geneva Conventions need not apply.

At least Williams could count on her fellow soldiers for support and mutual respect, right? “Bros before hos” is the rule, indicating loyalty to the team ahead of loyalty to outsiders. The problem is that it only works if the team one relies upon ignores your gender. Williams spent time with other units in her capacity as translator. They showed her the same respect they showed their own team because she demonstrated skills that helped them to do their job, she did not complain, and she treated them as though they were all boys together. Oddly, this changed when she wore mascara to a concert. Suddenly, the others realized she was female. They started to refer to her breasts and stopped using her name. These same people she was so comfortable with started to make rape jokes. She felt vulnerable for the first time because the cognition that female equals slut, bitch, or ho shattered the cognitions that she was a friend and had worth as a Specialist. The worst part for me when reading this text was when Williams recounted the incident wherein a fellow soldier attempts to molest her. “The next morning I’m writing in my journal about the incident with Rivers when he appears. “Listen, Kayla,” he says, all sheepish. Looking anywhere but at me. “I apologize. I was completely out of line back there. I hope there are no hard feelings. It was dumb, and it was wrong. So I hope you can, you know, accept my apology on this.” And just like that, he’s gone again. This throws me even more. I have all this righteous anger built up. And – wham! An apology? It feels like cheating. Like: This guy steps way over the line, and now he gets to be able to have it all just go away. Because now he’s sorry? (208). Williams unofficially reported the incident and Rivers was reassigned, but he told others that she begged him to let her suck his cock and when he refused (on the grounds that he was engaged), she was terribly disappointed.

She kept her distance from everyone after that. How can you argue with that position? It is one of the biggest, clearest examples of cognitive dissonance. A soldier stationed in a war zone does not turn down an offer of any kind of sex with a willing female – period. A guy who turns down sex due to a girlfriend back home is probably gay or impotent, according to military culture. A female who wanted to have sex of any kind does not have to rely on one person to give her sex – she has hundreds to choose from. So, how does this rumor of rejection gain general acceptance? How does someone who is free and easy with the sex elude a ‘bad reputation’ while someone who behaves becomes the pariah?

By the time Kayla Williams returned home, she had built up so much cognitive dissonance, she could not relate to anyone who did not share her subject position (military stationed in Iraq). Civilian life no longer made sense. Other veterans did not share her specific experience, so she was sure they had suffered worse. At the close of her narrative, she shared housing with two other soldiers who had been stationed in Iraq. She wrote her story to gain perspective. I hope it worked.

Work Cited


2005. Williams, Kayla. Love My Rifle More than You. Norton.

Shylock, In His Own Words

William Shakespeare wrote a play with a Jewish moneylender as its nominal villain. It is unknown as to whether Shakespeare had any access to Jewish people, Jewish history, or the laws as pertained to Jewish people. This moneylender, Shylock, has only three hundred sixty lines in The Merchant of Venice. He only appears in five of the play’s twenty scenes. Yet, Shylock remains one of Shakespeare’s most compelling characters. He falls short of the satiric comic villain and also fails to win complete sympathy. He is the quintessential outsider, an easy target for bullies; his attitude of contempt makes it unlikely that other Venetian citizens would stand up for him. Shylock would rather see Antonio dead at his hand than gain three times the money he was owed, which further alienates him from the other characters. Pain motivates his need for revenge. Shylock openly hates Christians in general, and Antonio in particular; he feels far more sinned against than sinning. In his own words, Shylock shares the pain and grief and fear that fuel his hatred toward Antonio. Antonio’s anti-Semitism and hypocrisy is balanced by Shylock’s honest forthright contempt; Shylock’s alien status allows him to see the contradictions between Christian values and practices.

Modern scholars must speculate as to what Shakespeare knew about Jews, what sources he drew upon to create the usurer who dared demand a pound of flesh as payment on a debt. The expulsion of Jews from England occurred three hundred years before Shakespeare’s time. Christopher Marlowe, his main rival, wrote The Jew of Malta, the story of an evil Jew who actively plots against his Christian neighbors. Marlowe and Shakespeare may have witnessed (or at least heard about) the trial and execution of Lopez, a Jewish physician accused of poisoning Queen Elizabeth. According to eyewitness accounts, the crowd treated the execution of Lopez as a comedy, laughing at his last words. Gratiano, a character who serves as comedy relief in The Merchant of Venice, delivers a cruel punchline to the judge’s verdict: “In christening shalt thou have two godfathers:/ Had I been judge, thou shouldst have had ten more,/ To bring him to the gallows, not the font “(4.1. ll.414-416). Was the character of Gratiano based on Shakespeare’s (firsthand or secondhand) impression of the crowd at the gallows, many of whom were groundlings at the Globe Theatre? The animosity shown by Gratiano does not seem to surprise any of the characters, including Shylock.

This is understandable, as there seems to be no character in The Merchant of Venice who does not harbor prejudice. The belief that others were inferior due to circumstances of their birth was widely accepted regardless of creed or class.

• Shylock is a professional moneylender.
• Shylock is an active parent.
• Shylock has strong ties to the Jewish community.
• Shylock is beaten, insulted and spat upon on a regular basis by Antonio and people who follow him.
• Shylock loses his business to Antonio.
• Shylock loses his daughter to Lorenzo, a Christian and known companion of Antonio.
• Shylock loses his personal savings because Christians incite his daughter to steal from him as she leaves.
• Shylock has one opportunity to have his revenge without repercussions.
• His need for revenge cost him half of his material possessions, his livelihood, and his ties to the Jewish community.

“So Musical a Discord” – Anachronisms in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream

A Midsummer Night’s Dream must contain the most culturally and chronologically diverse characters in fiction. “The musical discord holds together four different modes of representation: Theseus and Hippolyta, from classical legend; the four young lovers, from every place and every time; Bottom and his fellow English rustics; the fairies, who in themselves are madly eclectic. Titania is Ovid’s alternate name for Diana, while Oberon comes out of Celtic romance, and Puck or Robin Goodfellow is English folklore” (Bloom 166). These characters are unaware of one another at the opening of the play, but soon become involved in the plots of others. Shakespeare could not possibly write a play interweaving such diverse characters and not have anachronisms throughout the work. What makes Dream one of the greatest plays ever written is Shakespeare’s ability to make these anachronisms seem unimportant. How did he manage this theatrical feat? What inspired him to write Dream, one of the three plays out of thirty-nine (the other two are The Tempest and Love’s Labor Lost) in which Shakespeare does not use a primary source?

According to Bullfinch’s Age of Fable, Theseus quietly wed Hippolyta and left her after the birth of their son Hippolytus. Theseus later had a public wedding in Athens, to Phaedra. Hippolyta and her Amazons crashed the wedding to kill the entire wedding party, but Hippolyta was killed in that battle. That might help explain why Hippolyta’s lines can be read to imply hostility or eagerness: “Four days will quickly steep themselves in night;/Four nights will quickly dream away the time”(1.1:7-9). To further complicate matters, Titania is a synonym for Diana, the Roman name for Artemis, goddess of the Moon, the Hunt, and patron goddess of the Amazons. As Queen of the Amazons, Hippolyta would have also been her High Priestess. If Titania had grounds for jealousy, it would mean that the Amazon Queen had dared to touch the consort of her patron goddess. Any affair Titania had with Theseus would have had to happen before Oberon was born, as he is the offspring of Julius Caesar and Morgan le Fay. Would they care, these theatergoers, that most of the histories of the characters contradicted each other?

Part of his success is no doubt due to the obscurity of some of the details. Theseus tells Hermia “”if you yield not to your father’s choice,/You can endure the livery of a nun,/For aye to be in shady cloister mewed”(1.1:71-73).Who would know that cloisters were unheard of in an Athens that predated Roman rule and Christianity? Shakespeare concentrated on universal constants to hold the loyalty of his audience. Theatergoers knew (or could imagine) the pain of unrequited love, as well as the thrill of forbidden love. They could also relate to the fear and confusion felt by the rude mechanicals, even as they laughed at Bottom’s predicament. Shakespeare also took care to craft short, fast-paced scenes, shifting from one pair or set of character to another pair of set before the audience would have time to notice any contradictions.

Shakespeare spent a lifetime honing his craft by watching audiences and giving them what they craved. Scholars must speculate as to his motives and interior landscape; he did not leave behind written records of his thoughts. The timing of certain events and successive plays can certainly invite speculation as to the origin and inspiration of William Shakespeare’s works. In the first chapter of the Pulitzer Prize finalist text Will in the World, Shakespearean scholar Stephen Greenblatt notes the similarities between elements a series of performances commissioned by Leicester for Queen Elizabeth and elements in Dream. The obvious connection is the description of a platform Leicester built for Queen Elizabeth to view the leap of a mechanical dolphin, later referenced in Dream: “Thou rememb’rest/Since once I sat upon a promontory,/And heard a mermaid on a dolphin’s back”(2.1:148-150). Shakespeare watched the queen watching the performances, a mixture of classical poetry and rustic folktales, with slapstick comedies and dancing. It was a mass confusion, not allowing complete concentration on any one part; at one point, several acts physically collided. Everyone was surprised when Elizabeth requested a repeat performance. The second performance was smoother, well received by the audience, which included representatives from most walks of life. Shakespeare learned that a successful performance must include something for everyone.



Philip Henslowe, a theatrical agent/owner and contemporary of Shakespeare, kept meticulous records of theatrical performances. In his diary, he notes the performance of a play, Huon of Burdocize, on December 28, 1593. This play was based on the story of Huon of Bordeaux, recounted in the Legends of Charlemagne collected by Thomas Bullfinch. Huon, a knight who inadvertently killed the eldest son of Charlemange, meets the Faerie King Oberon while riding through the woods on a quest. Oberon, the first fairy godfather, takes an interest in Huon, gives him gifts and valuable advice. (In this tale, Oberon is portrayed as the son of Julius Caesar and Morgan le Fay.) Oberon even brings Huon to Avalon and abdicates in his favor, declaring him ruler over the ‘faerie folk’. Faeries rarely give birth, so the issue of succession is often settled by adoption. King Arthur objects, as he believes that if any human should rule Avalon, it should be Arthur; Huon offers to be co-ruler, thus restoring the peace. Oberon retracts his threats to turn Arthur into a werewolf and allows the co-rulership to stand. Shakespeare wrote A Midsummer Night’s Dream within three years of the opening of Huon.



Shakespeare knew classical gods and heroes held a timeless appeal. In his day, classical and medieval morality plays were often recycled. He understood the power of folk tales, something he would have seen at least four times per year in Stratford, never diminished by repetition. Puck, a figure straight out of English folklore, would be an alluring character to English audiences. He understood the widespread appeal of physical comedy. The rude mechanicals and their play-within-a-play would hold the attention of the groundlings. He knew that there must be at least one character who speaks for the audience, in plain language; Bottom serves that purpose in Dream. He may well have learned from the performance of Huon that an audience would ignore or forgive anachronistic flaws if the story was sufficiently entertaining. Shakespeare succeeded in crafting a plot so compelling that it not only made the flaws irrelevant, it inspired poets and writers for more than four hundred years.

Works Consulted

Bloom, Harold. Shakespeare – The Invention of the Human. Berkley Publishing Group, New York, 1998.

Bullfinch, Thomas. Age of Fable. World Publishing Company, 1965.

Bullfinch, Thomas. Age of Chivalry and Legends of Charlemagne. World Publishing Company, 1965.

Greenblatt, Stephen, et. al. The Norton Shakespeare Based on the Oxford Edition. New York: Norton, 1997.

Greenblatt, Stephen. Will in the World. W.W. Norton and Company, New York, 2004.