221-233

O'Brien relates the story back to the man in Vietnam in a very effective way. He says they have to joke about death and follows this up with a few euphemisms. He says, “And so a VC nurse, fried by napalm, was a crispy critter. A Vietnamese baby, which lay nearby, was a roasted peanut.” I have heard similar stories to these in which at first the soldiers come off as careless and insensitive but in the end are proven to just be trying to cope with the horrible atrocities going on around them. I think that the story about Linda and how he says he should have stopped the boy from pulling off her hat so that he would have had a little practice of courage for Vietnam at first seems like a joke but may in fact be true. Sure the two situations are very different but I think that as a nine year old in that class room it would have been almost as hard to stand up and stop him then as it would be to do some of the things he has to do in Vietnam.