Previous
Lieutenant Parsons
PFC Lockhart’s friend. Caputo describes the nineteen-year-old as “an all-American boy,” with blond hair, blue eyes, and the body of “a middleweight wrestler.”Corporal Gunderson later finds him dead, and Caputo helps to identify his body. Devlin had once gotten into trouble for sleeping on post, and Caputo made a plea of leniency for him because he was generally a good marine. The skipper let him off with a warning, and Devlin thanked Caputo for the favor.
PFC Peter Devlin Quotes in A Rumor of War
The A Rumor of War quotes below are all either spoken by PFC Peter Devlin or refer to PFC Peter Devlin . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter Twelve Quotes
That night, I was given command of a new platoon. They stood in formation in the rain, three ranks deep. I stood front and center, facing them. Devlin, Lockhart, and Bryce were in the first rank, Bryce standing on his one good leg, next to him the faceless Devlin, and then Lockhart with his bruised eye sockets bulging. Sullivan was there, too, and Reasoner and all the others, all of them except me, the officer in charge of the dead. I was the only one alive and whole, and when I commanded […] they faced right, slung their rifles, and began to march. They marched along, my platoon of crippled corpses, hopping along on the stumps of their legs, swinging the stumps of their arms, keeping perfect time while I counted cadence. I was proud of them, disciplined soldiers to and beyond the end. They stayed in step even in death.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Caputo has just had a dream in which he imagines that all of the dead marines he once knew are resurrected and join his new platoon. In his dream, they appear to him as they did when he identified their bodies in his new role as an assistant adjutant in charge of reporting on the war dead. The former soldiers’ grotesque and rotting bodies contrast with the liveliness of their movements. The scene that Caputo sets is similar to that of a zombie film, and there is something both macabre and comical about it. However, the morbidity of the scene Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asper
Get the entire A Rumor of War LitChart as a printable PDF.
"My students can't get enough of your charts and their results have gone through the roof." -Graham S.
PFC Peter Devlin Character Timeline in A Rumor of War
The timeline below shows where the character PFC Peter Devlin appears in A Rumor of War. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter Twelve
...night when he went to the hospital to identify three marines from his old platoon, Devlin, Lockhart, and Bryce. All three were blown up in a listening-post bunker ahead of C...
(full context)
That night, in a dream, Caputo is given command of a new platoon. Devlin, Bryce, and Lockhart are in the first of three ranks. Sullivan and Frank Reasoner, another...
(full context)
