In Peace on Earth we see into both sides of a vicious, blood-curdling battle in the trenches of WWI, when poison gas, hand-to-hand combat and starvation still played a big role in wars between countries. In a true event, something that history verifies happened, we get a glimpse of what could have happened on that day on the Western Front, between two armies, and the human beings who discovered there humanity on that Christmas Day, in the year of Our Lord, 1914.
In Muhammad's Revenge we see how the world can be, has been and will be again, changed in dramatically, historic fashion until it no longer is a world.
In the Duke, we see into the life of a totally disreputable, thoroughly unlikeable character but whose traits we all recognize because that are not only those of someone we have known but traits that we ourselves have suppressed most our lives. In fact, the further we read, the more we realize that we, ourselves, have some, maybe too many, of those same traits ourselves, as they are traits most human beings share but usually do not give in to or want to admit that, if circumstances were different, they might have given in to. And so, when the Duke is treated as we see that we might have treated him, knowing his history, we find ourselves agreeing
with the tormentors until a real human being tries to apologize to him for all their meanness, even as he lies dying because of it, and wonder how it is that this could even happen to anyone, in America, all the while knowing that it does, every single day of the year, somewhere in this country.
