In Fallen Angels, letters represent the link—and the unbridgeable distance—between the soldiers and their loved ones back home. Letters keep the soldiers connected with those they left behind, such as girlfriends and wives, mothers and brothers and fathers. But with every attempt to explain his experiences to his family, Perry realizes how he’ll never be able to fully express how the war is changing him. And some of the letters bluntly illustrate the distance between a soldier and those he left behind, like when Earlene breaks up with Peewee via letter, or when Lobel’s father writes an angry letter criticizing his son’s involvement in the war. Other letters remind the soldiers how far removed their experience is from their old lives. In Vietnam, little concerns like a coffee urn blowing up or the paper boy not leaving the papers on time don’t matter as much, if at all, to the soldiers, while these are extremely meaningful problems to the wives left behind. The two letters Perry writes explaining the circumstances of solders’ deaths—Carroll’s and Nate Turner’s—attempt to bridge this distance. So do his letters to little brother, Kenny, in which he tries to describe the war without indulging in heroic narratives. But the book leaves it an open question whether or not he succeeds.
Letters Quotes in Fallen Angels
Then I asked him about the letter.
“You know why that letter sucks?” he asked.
“How come?”
“Because I joined the friggin’ army in the first place so he would stop thinking I was a faggot,” Lobel said. “Now he thinks I’m a creep because I’m in the army.”
“What the hell does he know?”
“You know what I hope?” Lobel asked. “I hope I get killed over here so he has to fit that shit between his vodka martinis.”
“The next time we call for artillery, we’ll aim it right at your pad at home,” I said.
“You know what that jackass doesn’t know?” Lobel said, looking away from me, “He don’t know that now I can go back home and blow him away. That’s what I’m fucking trained for man. That’s what I’m fucking trained for.”
“You know, I never thought much about black people before I got into the army. I don’t think I was prejudiced or anything—I just didn’t think much about black people.”
“Well, we’re here,” I said.
“I think I should let his parents know what happened […] I don’t want to be let off the hook.”
“The letter I wrote […] is going to sit better with his family. You might feel bad, like you need to get something off your chest, but don’t drop it on his folks. It’s going to be hard enough just having him dead.”
He looked at me, then pushed the letter across the table. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
I wanted to be pissed at him. I wanted to think that he was crap because of what he said about black people. But the only thing I could think about was that I was glad it was Turner, and not me.
I just told him that war was about us killing people and about people killing us […] I had thought this war was right, but it was only right from a distance. Maybe when we all got back to the World and everybody thought we were heroes for winning it, then it would seem right from there. Or maybe if I made it back and I got old I would think back on it and would seem right from there. But when the killing started, there was no right or wrong except in the way you did your job, except in the way that you were part of the killing.
What you thought about, what filled you up more than anything, was the being scared and hearing your heart thump in your temples and all the noises, the terrible noises, the screeches and the booms and the guys crying for their mothers or their wives.
Letters Symbol Timeline in Fallen Angels
