“We were in Nam to stop the North Vietnamese from taking over South Vietnam. I didn’t really feel gung ho or anything, but I was ready to do my part.”

Perry is sent to Vietnam not really understanding what the conflict is about. His lack of personal opinions on the matter reflects the larger social understanding of the Vietnam War by many Americans during the mid-1960s. One of the themes of the novel is The Ambiguity of War, and Perry’s neutral feelings about the Vietnam war highlight the beginning of his larger disillusionment with the war.

“Stay away from dope. There’s only two kinds of people in Nam. People who are alert twenty-four hours a day, and people who are dead.”

During the Vietnam war, many soldiers turned to smoking marijuana or using heroin to cope with the traumas that they experienced. This quote highlights the impossible physical and emotional standards that soldiers were expected to meet. One of the most significant themes discussed in the novel are The Psychological Impacts of War. This type of hypervigilance is represented later in the novel as Perry and his squad see increasing amounts of death and violence.

“I wanted to say more to him. I wanted to say that the only dead person I had ever seen was my grandmother. I wanted to say that when I saw her I was ready…Jenkins was different. Jenkins had been walking with me and talking with me only hours before…seeing him like that…had grabbed something inside my chest and twisted it hard.”

Perry witnesses his first death during the Vietnam War and finds himself deeply unsettled by the sudden shift between life and death. Jenkins, despite not being a significant character in the novel, represents Perry’s first brush with both The Psychological Impacts of War—he finds himself constantly thinking of Jenkin’s death and this becomes the basis of his constant fear of death—and