Mennonite in "Searching for Intruders"

This past week in our class we have been reading a book called Searching for Intruders, by Stephen Byler.  It is a bleak "novel in stories" about a man named Wilson Hues who repeatedly fails to make his life come together in a satisfying way.  The novel documents the destruction of his marriage, doomed romance with a cancer patient, and damaging relationship with his father.  It is without a doubt a tragedy in the classic sense.

Stephen Byler is the first major male Mennonite author that we have read this semester.  What is curious about this is that Searching for Intruders is not explicitly Mennonite.  The Amish are mentioned, but somewhat in passing.  Throughout my reading I searched and searched for some Mennonite theme or image to grasp onto and came up empty.  However after letting the book simmer in the back of my mind for a while, I believe I have found why I couldn't identify the story as Mennonite.

I'll begin by explaining that each of the chapters begins with a short flashback.  Most of these center around Wilson's father and how he was violent, abusive towards animals and yet also a man with ambition.  Wilson is heavily affected by this and rebels against his fathers violence.  He always tries to avoid violence, even to cockroaches and wounded deer.  He also struggles with the inability to make things work out right in interpersonal situations.

I believe that these two tendencies are related.  His desire to avoid his father's violent personality causes him to subconsciously reject his father's drive and ambition.  I also believe that this portrayal of a peaceful person who causes tons of harm to others by trying to avoid causing it is Byler's critique of Mennonite pacifism.  He is subtly showing that pacifism can be taken to the extreme, where it does more harm than good.

On the final page of the book, a wise Chilean advises Wilson to "manage his affection" and to "learn the mercy of ruthlessness."  He rejects this advice, continuing in his self-destructive path of following only his most basic convictions.