Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in If I Die in a Combat Zone, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Evils of the Vietnam War
Courage
Duty vs. Conscience
The Enemy
Racism at War
Summary
Analysis
Alpha Company is deployed to protect a small village that sits in a lagoon on the Batangan Peninsula. O’Brien imagines that the lagoon must have once been an idyllic place, a romantic fishing village, a “port for travel and adventure.” Perhaps the lagoon even housed its own sea monster. O’Brien imagines that the villagers would burn fires on the beach at night to keep ships from wrecking against the coral; they’d burn incense to honor Buddha and boys would become men by bringing fish in from the sea. In reality, however, the village is now a “refugee camp” of 2,000 people surrounded by razor wire and minefields, with huts built out of army tin. The beaches are filled with mines. At night, looking over the ocean, the lagoon is still tranquil.
The lagoon and the village that sits there symbolizes Vietnam as a whole. O’Brien imagines that the lagoon was once an idyllic, romantic place, reflecting how Vietnam was also a beautiful country before foreign countries began meddling there. However, after decades of war and foreign occupation, the once-beautiful lagoon is little more than a haphazard refugee camp, riddled with mines. More broadly, this reflects how America’s war in Vietnam has ravaged the country, transforming it from a peaceful paradise to a war-torn wasteland.
Themes
The villagers fish at night, laying out their catch to dry in the morning. Men run up to O’Brien and tell him to call in a helicopter—a mine blew someone’s leg off during a patrol. The helicopter arrives, but the man bleeds to death during the trip. The next day, Bates and O’Brien cook crayfish with margarine and they make a feast for everyone. O’Brien calls in another helicopter—a soldier tried fishing with hand grenades from a boat, and one of them blew his stomach out.
The constant presence of death, even in a small seaside village, again reiterates how every inch of Vietnam represents danger and possible death, both for Americans and for the Vietnamese civilians who live there. The fishing soldier’s death is the result of a stupid accident, reinforcing how many soldiers die in non-heroic, senseless ways.
Themes
LZ Minuteman, an artillery base, sits half a mile from the lagoon. Each night the gunners calibrate their guns by taking practice shots into the ocean and measuring where they strike. One night, one of the gunnery commanders miscommunicates their firing coordinates: what should have been practice shots into the ocean instead hit the lagoon, wounding 33 and killing 13 civilians, including many children. A month later, after investigations conclude, the U.S. government pays a very small fee to each of the families who lost spouses or children. O’Brien thinks they’ve wrought worse “terror[]” on the villagers than any lagoon monster ever could.
The American artillery’s accidental slaughter of civilians typifies how horrific the effects of wartime errors can be, having a much worse effect on the civilian population than on the soldiers. The American government’s paltry payout to the families of the dead suggests that there is little accountability for the U.S.—they barely have to pay for their mistakes. Such needless suffering and O’Brien’s feeling that America is worse than any monster depicts the war in Vietnam as undeniably evil.
Themes
