If I Die in a Combat Zone

by

Tim O’Brien

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If I Die in a Combat Zone: Chapter 1 Summary & Analysis

Summary
Analysis
Tim O’Brien and a soldier named Barney take cover in a jungle in Vietnam. Snipers take shots at them, but O’Brien and Barney can’t see where they’re coming from so they don’t bother to shoot back. While they lie in the brush, they chat about Cleveland. Barney shows O’Brien his helmet, where he’s made tick marks to count the number of times that snipers have shot at them today. They are up to their 10th encounter so far. Barney seems upbeat, unbothered by any of the danger. When they start marching again, O’Brien lets Barney stay ahead of him a few meters since he knows Barney won’t look carefully for mines before stepping.
This opening portrays the nature of life during the Vietnam War as both tense and dull. The snipers shoot at O’Brien and Barney, obviously intending to kill them, which demonstrates that death could come at any moment. At the same time, Barney and O’Brien’s idle chatter suggests that the find the experience tedious and repetitive. The fact that O’Brien and Barney don’t even have visible targets to shoot back at foreshadows O’Brien’s ongoing struggle to clearly define who the enemy is.
Themes
The Evils of the Vietnam War Theme Icon
The Enemy Theme Icon
O’Brien and Barney keep hiking through the jungle, chatting. A sniper takes one shot at them, so they dive for cover before continuing on their way. With their squads, they stop and prepare to search an abandoned village for Viet Cong, though O’Brien thinks it’s a waste of time. They never find the Viet Cong; the Viet Cong always find them instead. Captain Johansen reports their location to headquarters on the radio, then he sits with O’Brien and Barney and smokes a cigarette. Johansen tells O’Brien that their search hopefully won’t take long.
O’Brien’s statement that the Viet Cong always find the Americans, never the other way around, suggests that the Vietnamese guerrillas are far more adept at operating in their dense jungle environment. Meanwhile, the fact that Captain Johansen casually smokes and chats with his soldiers suggests that although he is a commander, he has good rapport with his men.
Themes
The Evils of the Vietnam War Theme Icon
The Enemy Theme Icon
Carefully, the American squads fan out and slowly sweep through the village, watching for booby traps, “hoping to find nothing.” They find three tunnels, but rather than crawl in and search them and possibly set off a mine, the soldiers decide to just throw grenades in and collapse them. Gunfire erupts on the edge of the villages. Soldiers take cover and shoot “blindly” into the jungle—“nothing to aim at and kill.” The gunfire stops and O’Brien reflects that there is no “developing drama” to their war. Something happens, then it stops abruptly. As the soldiers sit back down, O’Brien remarks that there is “no fear left in [them].”
The soldiers’ hope that they will not find anything suggests that they care less about killing enemy soldiers or accomplishing objectives than they do about surviving. This hints at the soldiers’ general indifference about the war itself or any of its aims. Again, the fact that the soldiers shoot blindly into the brush, without any targets to aim at, foreshadows the story’s loose definition of who the American soldiers’ enemy truly is, especially when the people trying to kill them are practically invisible.
Themes
The Evils of the Vietnam War Theme Icon
The Enemy Theme Icon
Quotes
As the sun sets, the soldiers dig foxholes to sleep in and they eat rations from tin cans. At night, the real fear sets in as the soldiers’ imaginations populate the pitch black jungle. However, despite several firefights, they took no casualties that day, which makes them more confident to face the night. The soldiers rotate guards throughout the night, knowing that they will be attacked before sunrise as they always are. Late in the night, six mortar rounds strike nearby, but no one is hit. Bates tells Barney the Viet Cong must be running out of ammunition. In all, it isn’t a bad night.
The soldiers’ fear of the dark and their fantasies that the Viet Cong are coming for them at night suggests that the Viet Cong have become fixtures in their imagination, likely due to the fact that the American soldiers so rarely actually see the Viet Cong during the day. The predictability of this potentially lethal mortar attacks suggests that life as a soldier becomes oddly routine, even though it is always a matter of life and death.
Themes
The Evils of the Vietnam War Theme Icon
The Enemy Theme Icon
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