During Hell Week—the notoriously difficult portion of Navy SEAL training—recruits are given the option of ringing a small bell. Doing so signals to the officers that the recruits have given up on becoming SEALs: they’ve finally reached a breaking point. The bell is a constant temptation for Marcus Luttrell during his SEAL training, but one which he refuses to give into. Later on in the book, after Marcus lives through the horrors of Operation Redwing, the bell takes on a new symbolic dimension: it symbolizes the life Marcus could have had had he not chosen to become a SEAL. After contemplating the bell and, implicitly, this alternate course of events, Marcus comes to a proud conclusion: as challenging as his career as a soldier has been, he wouldn’t trade it for anything.
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