In The Hearts of Men (2017), his multigenerational and controversial Bildungsroman, Nickolas Butler devastatingly peels back the layers of the American educational system by using the scout honor code, attempting to stick to its rules in a world where violators appear to hold sway. This 2020 interview with the author, which is presented here for the first time to an Italian public, seeks to dig into the novel’s key insights grounded in the scout oath and law. It also aims to provide an inside perspective on issues ranging from the differences between scout law and a predominant militaristic worship to a core of morality which Butler’s text variously interrogates, eventually looking towards a quest for forgiveness. Butler seems thus to describe an unavoidable downfall that is also a premise for catharsis, for a healing of the wounds of an America that finds it hard not to repeat the same old faults.…
