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 states that to understand the minefields around My Lai, one also has to understand basic training at Fort Lewis in Washington. He befriends a recruit named Erik, though he never meant to make friends. O’Brien hates his time in Fort Lewis: he hates the drill sergeants, the officers, and the gung-ho new recruits. O’Brien knowingly considers himself above it all and resolves to not make friends and to suffer silently and alone. He dreams about a girl back home, idealizing her into something more than she is. He thinks about Canada and desertion as well.
O’Brien’s recognized sense of self-superiority suggests that his ethical objection to the war and military is mixed with some level of egotism. His decision to suffer alone implies that in his mind, he sees himself as some sort of martyr figure. This belies a particular level of arrogance mixed with O’Brien’s anti-war bent, indicating that he is still young and naïve about his place in the world.
Themes
Eventually, O’Brien tires of silently suffering. He asks Erik, sitting on the bunk next to him, what book he is reading. Erik hands him The Mint by T.E. Lawrence, and O’Brien thinks that by picking up the book and making a friend, he finally becomes a soldier. He and Erik talk about poetry, literature, travel, and their mutual disdain for army culture. They resolve to fight the army together, to keep themselves and each other from becoming “cattle” like all the other young soldiers.
O’Brien’s sense that he becomes a soldier as soon as he makes a friend suggests that camaraderie—even a bond based on mutual disdain for the army—is central to the soldier’s identity and ability to endure hardship. Erik and O’Brien’s desire not to become “cattle” suggests they want to maintain their individualism, even as the army tries to strip it away.
Themes
O’Brien and Erik rarely actually assert themselves against the war and basic training. One day Erik tells their drill sergeant, Sergeant Blyton, about his moral opposition to the war, and Blyton shouts and calls him a coward, watching him closely from then on. Erik fears that the sergeant is right—that all of Erik’s moral arguments are just masking his simple fear of dying in Vietnam. To avoid Blyton, Erik and O’Brien start spending their time sitting on a log behind the barracks, where they can be alone. Erik talks about how Robert Frost is the greatest American poet but Ezra Pound is the “truest.” He recites some of Pound’s verse and thinks Pound is right: they are going off to war not for “conviction” or “ideology,” but just because they fear society’s rejection and fear that they might not be heroes after all.
Sergeant Blyton is one of several characters who embodies the spirit of the army, and his charge that Erik is a coward for disagreeing with the war suggests that the military views anything less than total compliance as cowardice or insubordination. This obsession with compliance and obedience suggests that the military discourages free thought or individualism. Erik believes that fear may fuel his anti-war sentiments, but fear also compels him to do his duty and fight for his country. This suggests that fear, in some form or another, is a primary motivator for much of life.
Themes
The squad leader shouts at everyone in the barracks to wake up at three in the morning. The squad leader is as new as anyone else but he’s loud and he loves his new power. O’Brien hates him. A large recruit named Harry shouts back at the squad leader and threatens him, so the squad leader sets about bullying the smaller, younger boys, including a helpless kid named Kline. Everyone sets to getting dressed and scrubbing down the barracks. At four thirty, they march out into the cold Washington rain. Someone shoves Kline into place as he “practices coming to attention.” Sergeant Blyton arrives. O’Brien knows that, as drill sergeant, he must play a hated role and be severe, but O’Brien and Erik think he is evil, an embodiment of the army itself. Sergeant Blyton bullies Kline.
The squad leader seems to fear Harry and so chooses to bully Kline instead, who seems a weaker and easier target. Sergeant Blyton picks on Kline as well. Both instances suggest that the army encourages men to form a hierarchy among themselves and belittle the people below them, perhaps to feel a sense of power. However, whatever power the squad leader or Sergeant Blyton feel from harassing Kline is plainly just bullying, suggesting that the army creates an petulant, even childish, environment in which each person tries to prove themselves more powerful than the people around them.
Themes
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All morning, the recruits march and sing different army songs, mostly about women, sex, or “Charlie Cong.” One of the songs states, “If I die in a combat zone / Box me up and ship me home.” O’Brien thinks about his girlfriend, who just told him in a letter that she’s going to Europe. The recruits practice crawling beneath barbed wire, shooting, and stabbing with bayonets. By the songs and Sergeant Blyton’s reckoning, “there is no thing named love in the world. Women are villains,” the enemy. The company lines up while the battalion commander does his inspection.
Sergeant Blyton’s belief that women are the enemy suggests that the army firmly opposes feelings like romance, love, or tenderness, since they seem to contradict the manly bravado and need to show one’s own strength that the army fosters. This again portrays the military’s culture as childish in its attempt to stamp out any form of sensitivity or individualism from its men.
Themes
At ten o’clock at night, all the recruits return to the barracks, clean the place again for an hour, and fall asleep. O’Brien sits on the stairs outside in the middle of the night, on “fire watch.” He smokes and wonders how Socrates faced his own death, and where he and all the literary heroes found their bravery.
O’Brien uses Plato’s description of Socrates facing his own execution to contemplate the meaning of courage and bravery. His question of where people find their bravery implies that he wonders if he will ever find his own.
Themes
One day, Sergeant Blyton finds O’Brien and Erik sitting behind the barracks, talking alone during their off-hours. He yells and calls them “pussies” several times, accuses them of being homosexuals, and declares that they’ll be on guard duty for the night. O’Brien and Erik report to Blyton in the evening and spend the first half of their night walking rounds around the fort. They don’t mind—it’s a good chance to be alone and talk. With the seclusion of the night, they feel almost “free” for the first time in weeks.
Sergeant Blyton’s crude outburst depicts him as a foul, even childish figure, while his anger that O’Brien and Erik spend their free time alone suggests that the army despises individualism and wants all of its men to work, think, and rest as a group, presumably to make them more compliant and less likely to question the group’s actions.
Themes
After several hours of walking, O’Brien and Erik find a recruit making an “unauthorized phone call.” Erik and O’Brien briefly debate whether they should report the kid. They figure if they do, Sergeant Blyton will be ordered to relieve them and they can go to sleep. They decide to report the recruit, and he takes over O’Brien and Erik’s patrol for the rest of the night. They have a good laugh, feeling smart, and go to sleep. Looking back, O’Brien figures that Sergeant Blyton “won a big victory that night.”
Blyton’s “big victory” suggests that, when Erik and O’Brien report the other recruit, they submit to the military hierarchy to personally benefit themselves, thus making them closer to compliant soldiers than individualistic, conscientious objectors.
Themes
At the end of basic training, Erik and O’Brien walk to the processing station. Erik volunteered to serve extra time to avoid infantry assignment, so the army places him in a transportation unit. O’Brien gambled, imagining that they’d assign him to be a typist or clerk. Instead, the army assigns him to be a “grunt,” a foot soldier. He walks Erik to the bus and sees him off.
O’Brien’s assignment as a foot soldier means he will be in the most dangerous role in the Vietnam War. His belief that the army would naturally place him in some role other than a simple soldier suggests that he still maintains a level of egotism and hubris, believing that he is too intelligent and skilled to be a simple soldier.
Themes
