Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Fallen Angels, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
War, Trauma, and Dehumanization
Perseverance and Heroism
Race, Identity, and Belonging
Reality and Fiction
Faith and Hope
Summary
Analysis
A pared-down platoon of soldiers—maybe half their usual number—loads into choppers a little before dark. Simpson arranges them in a line along the path they expect the Vietcong to take to the village, which runs through a small cemetery. They put mines in the cemetery. Perry digs in behind his five insufficient sandbags. The night grows dark and still. It’s 10:30 p.m. Back home in Harlem, Kenny should be fighting Mama over bedtime. Perry wonders if Kenny would be able to feel it if he dies in Vietnam. He wonders what Mama thinks about the allotment checks she gets in the mail.
When Perry’s mind wanders to home from his faraway vantage point in Vietnam, the image doesn’t provide comfort, but rather emphasizes how far away his reality is from theirs. As his brother climbs into a safe bed, he lies exposed in a Vietnamese field; as his mother and brother argue about ultimately inconsequential things like bedtime, Perry knows that he will likely have to kill or be killed on this mission.
Themes
Perry tells himself he’s bored. He rolls over and pees downhill, too scared to stand up in the dark. He considers his virginity. He fantasizes about movie stars and singers he’d like to have sex with, but he mostly just feels frustrated—and scared—at the thought that he might die without having loved anyone deeply.
Perry seems to try to use Lobel’s coping mechanism here—using fantasy to take the hard edge of his genuinely terrifying circumstances. But it doesn’t work for him, suggesting his solid rooting in reality, even when it’s painful or hard.
Themes
Suddenly, voices and shadows fill the cemetery. The platoon opens fire blindly. Eventually, Simpson tells them to hold their fire while Carroll sends up a flare. By its light, Perry sees dead and dying Vietcong fighters on the ground. Peewee finds one body just outside the entrance to the tunnel they used to bypass the American ambush. Simpson throws a grenade down its mouth, and the squad begins to retreat toward the landing zone. But then, Perry hears a single gunshot. Lieutenant Carroll cries out and collapses. The squadron opens fire toward the trees as Johnson and Walowick drag Carroll toward the shelter of the hamlet.
Like ghosts, the Vietcong fighters somehow slip past the ambush line; their ability to melt into the shadows contributes to the terror and trauma the soldiers experience in the war. No one knows where the shot that hits Carroll comes from. This helps explain how and why the soldiers dehumanize their enemies, who seem more like supernatural creatures than people in moments like this. But it doesn’t reduce the terror.
Themes
Monaco and Peewee pump rounds into the village to keep the villagers—and any Vietcong among them—at bay while Johnson sets up his machine gun. Terrified and angry, he and the rest of the squad fire blindly into the darkness, even though they have no idea where their enemies might be. Or even if they’re out there. When the chopper arrives, its blades level the village and its gunner shoots down the fleeing villagers. The soldiers shove Carroll in then climb up after him. They all ride to Chu Lai, where an ambulance rushes Carroll away.
It turns out that Simpson’s words about pacifying the village to death were prophetic, and the Americans become terrorizers equal in destructive capacity to their Vietcong adversaries. The war, which dehumanizes the Vietnamese in the eyes of the Americans, also turns the Americans into monsters in the eyes of the Vietnamese.
Themes
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Perry can’t stop shaking. Peewee tries to hold Perry’s hands still. Eventually, someone leads them to the mess hall, and they get some coffee. A medic directs them to building A-3, where a doctor explains that Carroll was fatally shot under his arm. Monaco leads the squad in Carroll’s prayer for fallen angel warriors.
While Jenkins’ death affected Perry deeply, the loss of Carroll strikes even harder, since Carroll was one of the few officers who seemed to be truly concerned with the soldiers’ wellbeing. Still, in moments like this, when the unthinkable happens, the soldiers find solace in the shared experience of prayer.
Themes
