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
O’Brien feels that working in LZ Gator, away from the fighting, allows him to “rejoin[s] the real United States Army.” He works as a typist in an office, a standard bureaucracy, writing up commendations and handling requests. His office writes the same Purple Hearts for everything from a minor scratch to death. It awards Bronze Stars to “officers who know how to lobby.” Life is “dull” but peaceful. O’Brien celebrates Thanksgiving there, then Christmas Eve. He drinks with the officers and then at midnight he watches soldiers fire off artillery, flares, and grenades as celebration. Christmas day is filled with more drinking.
O’Brien’s sense that, behind a desk, he enters into the “real United States Army” suggests that this is the military service all of the high-ranking officers know: mostly comfortable and far from combat. This implies that the people keeping the Vietnam War running do not experience any of its horrors or pains because they live insulated lives within safe bases, with only minor threats to their safety. As a result, such people are less motivated to end the war or return the soldiers home.
Themes
Every once in awhile, LZ Gator hosts floor shows with strippers flown in from other countries. The drinking and strippers become exhausting after a time, and O’Brien and Bates ultimately swear off the floor shows for the remainder of their tour. LZ Gator is also an artillery base, and at night O’Brien can hear the guns firing across the hill: it disrupts Obrien’s sleep and sometimes it nearly irritates him until he remembers what a support that artillery is during combat. Viet Cong fighters attack LZ Gator once while O’Brien is there, slipping through the perimeter and killing one man. The Americans find and kill the intruders by morning and throw their bodies into the square of a nearby village.
O’Brien’s irritation at the artillery guns, even though they are providing support to other soldiers in the field, suggests O’Brien has forgotten the realities of life in the field now that he is removed from the daily horror of combat. The American soldiers’ decision to throw the Viet Cong bodies in a nearby village square suggests that the Americans want to make an example of the dead Vietnamese, warning other villagers not to oppose them. This depicts America as an aggressive, dictatorial force rather than a moral defender of democracy.
Themes
O’Brien goes on leave in Sydney, Australia. An old woman at the hotel arranges a girl for O’Brien to meet, though he realizes he’s forgotten how to talk to women. He spends most of his time on his own, looking for libraries, going to bars in the evening, and swimming in the ocean. On the last night of leave, he visits the old woman and arranges another date and then he returns to Vietnam feeling spent and tired.
O’Brien depicts both his life on LZ Gator and his leave in Australia as lifeless and exhausting despite being peaceful, suggesting that his time as a soldier has worn out his spirit. He has little energy left to commit to anything, especially after the horror and chaos he witnessed.
Themes
O’Brien starts writing letters to Erik again. Erik’s military service is nearly finished and he reflects on his participation in the war. Erik recounts watching an officer kick a Vietnamese woman and standing by, feeling like the centurion that idly watched Christ go to Golgotha. He thinks the war changed nothing except that Christ is now a “yellow-skinned harlot.” The whole war seems evil.
Although O’Brien likened himself to Christ in the beginning of the novel, being sacrificed on behalf of his country, Erik’s feeling that the Vietnamese woman is actually Christ implies that the Vietnamese civilians are the ones truly sacrificed for the sake of America’s needless and evil war.
Themes
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