Department of English and American Studies
←
→
Page content transcription
If your browser does not render page correctly, please read the page content below
Masaryk University
Faculty of Arts
Department of
English and American Studies
English Language and Literature
Jakub Hamari
Jarhead: a Marine’s Chronicle of the Gulf
War and other Battles
A Narrative Analysis of the Novel
Bachelor’s Diploma Thesis
Supervisor: doc. PhDr. Tomáš Pospíšil, Dr.
2013I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently,
using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.
……………………………………………
2ACKOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank my supervisor, doc. Tomáš Pospíšil, for all his support and
help.
I would also like to thank my friend Jan Zbořil, who has been a great supporter
during all phases of my work.
Many thanks belong to my family, without whose support I would never even
get to write this thesis in the first place. Especially to my sister, who has offered me
many useful insights on the topic.
3TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Introduction ................................................................................................................. 5
2. Author’s biography..................................................................................................... 7
3. Swofford’s applied literary techniques ..................................................................... 9
4. Main Characters ....................................................................................................... 12
4.1 Swofford ........................................................................................................................... 12
4.2 Troy................................................................................................................................... 12
4.3 Mr. Swofford .................................................................................................................... 13
5. Analysis of the Novel................................................................................................. 15
5.1 Significance of the opening scene ................................................................................... 15
5.2 Three moments shifting the perspective ........................................................................ 16
5.2.1 Deciding for the Marines for the first time ................................................................. 16
5.2.2 Thinking about suicide ................................................................................................ 17
5.2.3 Swofford’s retrospective analysis ............................................................................... 19
5.3 Joining the Marine Corps ............................................................................................... 20
5.4 The Nature of Swofford’s War ....................................................................................... 23
5.4.1 About Football and Field Fuck ................................................................................... 26
5.4.2 Writing Home and Sexual Frustration ........................................................................ 29
5.4.3 The Pain of (not) Killing ............................................................................................. 35
5.4.4 The Anti-anti-war Movies........................................................................................... 40
5.4.5 Religion in the USMC ................................................................................................ 42
5.4.6 The War’s End ............................................................................................................ 43
5.5 Looking back.................................................................................................................... 44
6. Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 46
Résumé in English ......................................................................................................... 51
Resumé v češtině ........................................................................................................... 51
41. INTRODUCTION
War has been a topic for writers since time immemorial. Throughout the
centuries, stories about war and the people who waged it were told, discussed and
interpreted. The twentieth century has provided amplitude of conflicts and vast amount
of war narratives, which have now become classics. The first decade of the twenty first
century has been marked by two major conflicts which saw the involvement of United
States Marine Corps. This is the fighting force in which Anthony Swofford participated
as a scout/sniper during the first Gulf War dubbed Operation Desert Strom, but the
marines called it simply The Desert. His narrative Jarhead: a Marine's chronicle of the
Gulf War and other battles has since its first release in 2003 become a cult novel among
the military personnel and highly praised war narrative among the critics (Rieckhoff,
2006; Author’s Website). The success of his debut novel was so massive, that Swofford
could not handle it and wasted most of it on drugs, sex and sports cars, in which he had
a near-fatal accident (The Book Show #1246). Swofford himself believes, that his time
in the Marine Corps is to blame for that more than the excess of money and fame
following the book’s success (The Book Show #1246).
In my thesis, I discuss Anthony Swofford’s novel Jarhead in the form of the
original text. The novel, first published in 2003, offers the reader a very personal insight
on the thoughts and actions of Anthony Swofford during his adolescence and his stay in
the military.
The work itself is divided into four main chapters, with the last one being
divided into multiple subchapters and I sum up the work with a conclusion.
The first chapter provides Anthony Swofford’s background as a serviceman in
the USMC, but also his family relationships, which are fundamental for understanding
the novel itself, because of its autobiographical features.The second chapter provides an insight on the literary techniques, which
Swofford uses in his novel. To point out some of these- unreliable narration based on
the terms proposed by Fludernik and, in popular war narratives, not so frequently found
method of establishing intimacy between the audience and the narrator by showing the
main character’s/author’s flaws.
The third chapter of my thesis focuses on the three characters, who I found as
the most important in the plot twists of the novel. These characters are Anthony
Swofford himself, a fellow scout/sniper Troy and Swofford’s father, who I dubbed Mr.
Swofford, since his name is never given. This chapter helps the reader understand the
drive of the characters right from the beginning, so it makes navigation through the plot
simpler.
The fourth and final chapter is pivotal for my thesis, because in it I analyze the
text Jarhead as a whole. I applied multiple subchapters into this chapter to analyze
certain aspects of the novel more thoroughly. The aim of the subchapters is to analyze
factors like cultural clash, Swofford’s relationship with women or his thoughts on
taking lives. Especially, I stress out the importance of the transition, which takes part on
three occasions. These occasions change Swofford from being a child, who is adamant
on becoming a marine and finally transforming the man into the author of Jarhead.
Swofford himself mentions war movies as a great factor in his military life and
thus I also explore the connections between the so-called anti-war movies and the
effects they have on the narrator. This I achieve through the application of some
thoughts produced by Jeffrey Gross, Garrett Stewart and others. The text is carefully
analyzed to prove that Swofford’s narrative technique and the elaborate events of the
novel make it an unsurpassable enterprise in the war narrative genre of the last decade.
62. AUTHOR’S BIOGRAPHY
Anthony Swofford was born in 1970 in California. His family had strong ties to
the military. His grandfather went fighting in the WWII, his father served in Vietnam,
his uncle died during his service in the marines and his brother was enlisted in the army
and stationed in Germany, during Swofford’s time in the Gulf War. Due to his father’s
work in the Air Force, Swofford’s family lived most of his childhood on military bases.
Anthony decided to join the military as early as possible, because he saw it as an
introduction to becoming a man and also he was afraid that he would become homeless.
He joined the United States Marine Corp at the age of 17, more accurately, half a year
after his 17th birthday, the minimal acceptable age for the recruit. He could have joined
at 17 but his parents would have to sign him up and they did not want another son
joining the military, so he waited another six months and signed himself.
After his military career Anthony Swofford found hard adapting to civilian life
and after trying a variety of jobs he decided to deepen his education. He received
education at American River College, the University of California; Davis and the
University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop, where he received the Master of Fine Arts
degree. He then worked as a teacher at University of Iowa and Lewis, at St. Mary's
College of California and also at Clark College. Anthony Swofford is a Michener-
Copernicus Fellowship recipient (Jarhead, Author’s Website).
After Jarhead he wrote a novel Exit A, a work of fiction, which still maintains
some autobiographic features and after that he wrote a completely autobiographic piece
Hotels, Hospitals and Jails depicting years following the events of Jarhead. Aside from
his literary achievements, he also contributed to the documentary Operation
7Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience, which focuses on Afghanistan and Iraq
experience of soldiers, marines and air men as they themselves have written it down.
83. SWOFFORD’S APPLIED LITERARY TECHNIQUES
The plot of the novel, told by the first person narrator, is never cohesive and
keeps transiting from one period of time to another one, related to each other only by
the presence of the narrator. The first person narrator is a homodiegetic narrator, mainly
because the other characters appearing in the story are depicted only by how their
actions appear in the narrator’s view (Fonioková 70) and the narrator’s view is blurred
“by wind and sand and distance, by false signals, poor communication, and bad
coordinates, by stupidity and fear and ignorance, by valor and false pride. By the
mirage.” (Swofford, 2).
His unreliability as a narrator is based on his inability to provide accurate
information, he is ideologically unreliable and there is lack of objectivity of his claims.
These are three aspects that for Fludernik provide the basis of an unreliable narrator (qtd.
in Fonioková, 67). Fludernik proclaims that “for unreliability to be present in the text,
there needs to exist a secret, a figure in the carpet, that the reader has to uncover behind
(and against) the narrator’s discourse” (qtd. in Fonioková 50). This not the case of
Jarhead, there is no secret character present, there is only the narrator and his
complaints, which he gives to the audience.
The narrator proves his unreliability in the very beginning stating: “[…] what
follows is neither true nor false but what I know.” (Swofford, 2). Swofford also adds
that he must have consulted maps, charts, weapon capabilities etc. to provide accurate
details about things that he has forgotten. He continues his narrative unconvincingly
with a try to remember the faces and names of his platoon mates, their girlfriends and
wives, who stayed faithful and who did not.
9Swofford clearly declares what he remembers or he does not, he is honest to his
audience, in an interview he stated that “I could have written a flattering portrait of
myself as a young Marine, but it would have been a much lesser book.” (Anderson).
This is an interesting method, because the popular culture, throughout time, tends to
show the soldier as the bearer of the best (preferably American) values, as seen in many
more or less successful war movies like The Green Berets (Kellogg; Wayne, 1968), Red
Dawn (Milius, 1984), Top Gun (Scott, 1986), Saving Private Ryan (Spielberg, 1998) or
Pearl Harbor (Bay, 2001).
Even though Swofford at first undermines the reader’s faith in the accuracy of
his claims, he establishes a sense of intimacy between himself and the reader with lines
such as “[I remember] lovers to whom I lied; lovers who lied to me.” (Swofford, 3). The
reader must always keep in mind, already mentioned Swofford’s words: “[…] what
follows is neither true nor false but what I know.” (Swofford, 2), the memoire is not
going to provide accurate information about battles, unit movement or equipment, it is a
deeply personal account of what the United States Marine Corps (USMC) does not put
into their brochures.
The perception of time and its recollection is of great importance in the whole
novel. Since Swofford tries to be as accurate as he can be, he uses precise dates for
things occurring during his time in the Desert. The dates he uses are taken from official
documents (Swofford, 2). There is a conflict between the precision of the dates during
the war and the vagueness of time, when he recalls his childhood or adolescence. There
is no documentary for his childhood or growing up he can find in the Federal
Depository Library, where he finds documents about the war (Swofford, 2). His
childhood and adolescence can be recalled only through strong emotional voyages into
10his memory. His precise dating of the events in the military is a resonance of the
military itself in him, the hard precise man, who is trying hard to cope with life. But
when he was a child he was not yet so hard or precise and thus his memories are more
tender and mellow, than the ones of him being a jarhead.
114. MAIN CHARACTERS
It is important to provide some detail on the main characters that appear in the
narrative. For the purposes of my thesis I have narrowed the amount of characters
analyzed to three- Swofford, Troy and Swofford’s father, known only as Mr. Swofford.
4.1 SWOFFORD
Throughout the book Swofford never gives the impression of being arrogant. He
is aware of his superior killing skills over the average infantry man, which would be a
source of great pride for the most marines, but he never praises himself for being
smarter or sexier or in any way a better man than anybody else.
He states that “Like most good and great marines, I hated the Corps.” (Swofford,
33). This statement presumes that a sign of being a good and a great marine must be that
a person hates the USMC. Why he hates the Corps is that it takes away the possibility of
being something else than a marine. A person can be a good marine or a bad marine
(whose traits are not specified in Swofford’s narrative). There are only these two
absolutes and anything else is just not possible. This boxing in and cancelling of
possibilities frustrates the young man, as he wants to have dozens of opportunities in
life. Opportunities for being “smart, famous, sexy, oversexed, drunk, fucked, high,
alone […] known, understood, loved, forgiven […]” (Swofford, 33). A great motivation
for Swofford, during his time in the USMC, is the only one trait a person must have to
be a true marine and that is to kill “You consider yourself less of a marine and even less
of a man for not having killed while at combat.” (Swofford, 247).
4.2 TROY
Troy is an important character in Swofford’s narrative for many reasons, one of
them being a scene, where he interrupts Swofford’s suicide attempt. But what makes
12him truly important is the fact that he is mentioned by Swofford even outside the USMC
and after their involvement in the war. It is his death and his subsequent funeral, where
Swofford mentions him. The sense of lost is massive for Swofford, when he learns that
Troy died. Their comradeship was the cliché brothers in arms one. Something Philip
Caputo describes as being “unlike marriage, a bond that cannot be broken by a word, by
boredom, or divorce, or by anything other than death.” (Caputo, A Rumor of War, 18)
and even death seems unable to break this bond. Troy earns much of his respect in
memoriam when Swofford learns that Troy minimized his part in his war stories and
gave most of the credit to his comrades (Swofford, 79), thus confirming what Broyles
states “Every good story is, in at least some of its crucial elements, false.” (Broyles,
1984) and these stories, what Troy made up are the best ones for every audience, be it
Swofford, other marines or Troy’s friends in Michigan. The reason why Troy becomes a
major storyteller is that his stories resonate through his audience years after they have
been told and they even surpass their author’s death.
4.3 MR. SWOFFORD
Swofford’s childhood, as depicted in the book, is always set in a military frame.
This frame is mostly provided by his father, who was an Air Force officer during the
Vietnam War. His father’s experience in the war left him disturbed. What made the
relationship with his father even worse was that his father was a perpetual liar, as
Swofford states in an interview and that his biggest lie ever was that “he deceived
himself about how that little war in Southeast Asia had changed him.” (Monroy,
Writing What Haunts Us). However Swofford stresses out that his father was never the
stereotypical grunt depicted in the movies, due to his age, family ties and proclivities
towards Scotch and beer.
13“He was not crazed, fucked-in-the-head grunt, stoned on uppers
and nodding on H, not stealthy Special Forces guru, nineteen or twenty,
the perfect age to die, he was a father and a lifer, and while he wasn’t
necessarily a patriot, he wouldn’t be fragging anyone over orders he
didn’t groove on or dig- he’d build the fucking landing strip in the middle
of the gookthick jungle and at the end of the day hope for Chivas and a
Budweiser, write a few letters home, maybe screw a whore in the ville.”
(Swofford, 39)
His father’s post traumatic stress disorder manifested itself in him not being able
to stand in one place for too long, migraines, uncontrollable clutching of fists and
avoiding social events.
“His doctors weren’t able to explain these ailments […] Of course
he needed help. […] My father was thirty-nine years old and the world
seemed a dead, cold place, void of promises. The problems of his psyche
had become manifest in this hands.” (Swofford, 41)
Swofford himself is a product, a manifestation, of the Vietnam War, he was
conceived during his father’s leave on Honolulu and thus he will always make his father
remember his war experience. “In bed, in Hawaii, my parents are fornicating. I cannot
watch, and neither can you.” (Swofford, 40).
145. ANALYSIS OF THE NOVEL
5.1 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE OPENING SCENE
The first chapter sets the tone and frame for the novel. It opens with, now former
marine, Anthony Swofford in his basement, almost nine years after his discharge “the
movie cliché, mad old warrior going through his memorabilia, juicing up before he runs
off and kills a few with precision fire.” (Swofford, 1). This scene is important because
the audience gets to know that Swofford is no longer tied to the military in an official
way and all his unofficial ties are hidden in his rucksack in the basement.
This scene resembles an investigation of a burial site and exhumation of a corpse,
the forensic expert, Swofford, is “[…] not mad. I am not well, but I am not mad. I’m
after something. Memory, yes.” (Swofford, 1) and the corpse is, as the quote suggests, a
memory of his former life. The author is undergoing a radical change of thinking, which
I will analyze in greater depth in the following subchapter.
In this chapter Swofford states that he is not well now, but clearly he also was
not well then, in the USMC, and certainly he was not well in the Desert.
“I remember about myself a loneliness and poverty of spirit;
mental collapse; brief jovial moments after weeks of exhaustion;
discomfiting bodily pain; constant ringing in my ears; sleeplessness and
drunkenness and desperation; fits of rage and despondency; mutiny of the
self; lovers to whom I lied; lovers who lied to me.” (Swofford, 3)
This passage states what kind of narration can the reader expect trough the
whole novel and presume that it will be frantic, gloomy and most of all deeply personal.
155.2 THREE MOMENTS SHIFTING THE PERSPECTIVE
In the novel, there are three major scenes concerning Swofford’s growing-up.
All three are brought up by severely disturbing experiences and the narration is thus
blurred and warped by Swofford’s state of mind at that time.
5.2.1 DECIDING FOR THE MARINES FOR THE FIRST TIME
The first occasion that changed the course of Swofford’s life was him witnessing
the bombing of marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983, killing 241, mostly marines, by
then he was fourteen (Swofford, 127). This time he felt the death of others and he
wanted to reciprocate for what those 241 dead have given up for him. “At the ripe age
of fourteen I’d decided my destiny. I would war and fight and make good for those dead
boys dead in Lebanon […]” (Swofford, 131).
He, for the first time, grasped something what he calls manhood
“[The marines] were men and I was a boy falling in love with
manhood. I understood that manhood had to do with war, and war with
manhood and to no longer be just a son, I needed someday to fight.”
(Swofford, 128)
The transition into manhood according to Jeffords is “a set of images, values,
interests, and activities held important to a successful achievement of male adulthood in
American cultures.” (Jeffords, The Remasculinization of America, xxii) and for
Swofford these images, values and so on, were deeply connected to the imagery
provided by the USMC. Jeffords’ main argument is the masculinity and it is deeply
entrenched in the American culture as such. Swofford’s naïve visions of manhood
confirm her theory.
16Swofford also states that from that moment, when he decided to become a
marine, he did not care much about anything else then joining the Corps. His social life
was shattered “[other kids] thought I was crazy and that with my camouflage hat and
talk of war and retribution I might kill someone or myself.” (Swofford, 128)
But this mattered little to adolescent Swofford since he describes himself as a
loner.
“I kept most of my life to myself, not willing to share what would
be ridiculed and tainted by the kids smarter and hipper and better dressed,
the better athletes, the better students, the kids who’d fuck already, the
punk rocker and metalheads and all of them- any of the groups to which I
could never belong.” (Swofford, 131)
5.2.2 THINKING ABOUT SUICIDE
The second occasion, where Swofford swaps time and place and tries to grasp
the past events takes place during his stay in the rear-rear1. Swofford for the first time
mentions his older sister, who is constantly threatening to end her life, so she has to be
locked up in a mental hospital. The sanity of the narrator is also in question as he has
doubts about the place located outside of the soon-to-be combat zone and he rather be in
the field than in this “abandoned oil company camp” he believes to, in fact, be
“[…] a military base that had sat vacant for years, waiting for the
American protectors to arrive in the event of regional conflict, protectors
who’d be tolerated until they obliterated the threat and returned the
region’s massive oil reserves to their proper owners.” (Swofford, 63)
1
A safe zone located behind the warfront
17In this place Swofford feels strong anxiety but his “[…] platoon mates urge me
to please shut up about the place being rigged, about the Saudis wanting us to die for
their oil […]” (Swofford, 65) so he decides to step down from his argument. A fellow
Marine is down at sick call, being on a “suicide watch” after witnessing his wife’s
infidelity on a videocassette, she sent him. The term “suicide watch” makes Swofford
think about his sister and the visits he and the mother gave her in institutions for
suicidal patients. The suicide stays a strong topic for Swofford even after the events of
Jarhead as he participates in the Hero Project with his contribution on new wave of
suicides in the military (Swofford, Newsweek, Vol. 159, No. 22).
Swofford’s sister attempted suicide more than once and she spends most of her
life in these institutions, as Swofford foreshadows. After contemplating about his
girlfriend’s possible infidelity, which he sees as certainty, Swofford puts the muzzle of
his rifle into his mouth.
“But Kristina’s various infidelities are not the reasons […] The
reasons are hard to name. […] To move closer toward my sister?
Cowardice? Fatigue? Boredom? Curiosity? It’s not the suicide’s job to
know, but only to do.” (Swofford, 70)
His squad mate Troy walks in just in time to stop him. Swofford later
contemplates about himself not yet having reached the point, where he could commit
suicide with a clear mind. He directly links the act of taking one’s own life as an act of
courage and that he lacks the courage.
“[…] I think suicide is rather courageous. To look at one’s life
and decide that it’s not worth living, then to go through with the horrible
18act […] there is the courageous man and woman, the suicide. But I don’t
own the courage to kill myself.” (Swofford, 74)
5.2.3 SWOFFORD’S RETROSPECTIVE ANALYSIS
The last one, going deep into his childhood on an American Air Force base in
Japan, is started after the humiliating football game in full MOPP suits2 during intense
heat of the Desert. Combined with food poisoning, Swofford and other squad members
were not yet aware of, led to a loss of consciousness and most certainly death if they
were not taken care of (Swofford, 24).
Shortly after the football game, Swofford states that he must sit down and as his
senses fail, the narration jumps from the Desert to his memories from Japan. He, as a
child, wants to buy candy for his sister’s birthday and stranded roams the streets of
Tachikawa, until he wanders into a tattoo shop, where a couple is getting a portrait
tattoo of each other done (Swofford, 23). When the tattoo artist notices him he throws a
cigarette at him, the child Swofford picks it up, throws it back and runs out of the shop.
The woman starts screaming. “I didn’t stop running until I made it home.” (Swofford,
24)
This scene serves as a template for Swofford’s state of mind during the whole of
the novel. He goes someplace with a good intention, observes and tries to understand
acts that are incomprehensible for him at that moment, so he can analyze them after
many years.
After the evidence I have provided there can be little doubt that this is a product
of mere exaggeration or a literary tool for building up the existential features of the
2
Mission Oriented Protective Posture, suit protecting its wearer against biochemical weapons
19book. Swofford provides these three occasions to underline his personality and that his
narration will be fractured, grim and not cohesive, due to his experiences during his
childhood and growing up.
5.3 JOINING THE MARINE CORPS
Swofford, apart from a means for manning up, sees the USMC as a way of
escaping a gruesome life of the homeless, because during Reagan’s administration the
homeless situation became a major topic for the media and thus it was affecting then
adolescent Swofford. He therefore feels lucky to have a home in the Corps.
“I’d always worried about losing my home and running out of
everything […] As a teenager I often suffered anxious daydreams of
becoming homeless, out of a job, unskilled and unloved. […] I joined
the Marine Corps in part to impose domestic structure upon my life, to
find a home […]” (Swofford, 145)
The reason why he chose the Marine Corps over other branches of the American
military is fairly simple, he did it to spite his father, who was an airman, wings, as they
are called by the legs, which is how the airmen denounce the marines. (The Book Show
#1246).
Swofford entered the United States Marine Corps at the age of 17 and a half.
The reason why I stress these six months is that the recruit can join at age 17, which
Swofford wanted, but only under the condition that their parents (or other legal
representatives) have signed the contract in acknowledgement of this (Swofford, 204).
That does not happen in Swofford’s case. The reason is quite simple- the parents did not
agree with their son joining the military at such a young age. The reason mother gave is
follows
20“[…] You should go to college before you decide to run off in the
military. I missed college because I married your father, and the next fall
when I should’ve been at the university, I was in Seville. Spain was nice,
but college would’ve been better. You don’t want to run away to dirty
foreign countries. Every marine we ever met complained about the
Marine Corps. They get paid less than anyone else and the food is
supposed to be the worst.” She looked away from me.”And the women
near the bases have diseases. […]” (Swofford, 130)
Mrs. Swofford feels, like most mothers, what her son is like better that the son
himself. It is not just protection from poor social status the marines hold or the risk of
sexually transmitted diseases, which make the USMC unfavorable. She knows her son
is a gentle and intelligent person (Swofford, 248) and she is certain that, eventually, he
would voluntarily, after a bitter struggle for happiness, leave the Corps, which indeed
does happen. Another marine commented on this in his open letter to Defense
department: “What concerns me […] is that among my peers, the ones with ideas are
the ones getting out, because they just don't feel the organization values
them.“ (Anonymous, A Marine officer: I’m leaving the Corps because it doesn’t much value
ideas, 2011).
Swofford’s father’s reasons were much different, less practical than his mother’s,
but the intension was the same- not getting their son killed. He had personal experience
of the military, his brother died while in the marines and their father, Anthony’s
grandfather, served in the Air Force during the WWII, so what he had to say to this
matter was deeply rooted in him. On the day Anthony brought the Staff Sergeant home
to convince his parents, the father proposed this
21“Staff Sergeant, I’ll sign your contract if you guarantee me you
won’t get my son killed. Then I’ll sign your contract […]” The recruiter
said, “I’m sorry, sir. I cannot tell you that. I can tell you Tony will be a
great marine. That he’ll be a part of the finest fighting force on earth and
he’ll fight proudly all enemies of the United States, just as you did once.
He will be a great killer.” (Swofford, 206)
Needless to say, the meeting between Swofford’s parents and the Staff Sergeant
did not result in Swofford entering the USMC at age 17. Young Anthony Swofford
would eventually join the military six months later, but back then he was devastated to
realize how his parents altered his fate.
“What would I do with myself? […] I wanted to be a killer, to kill
my country’s enemies. […] I needed the Marine Corps now, I needed the
Marine Corps to save me from other life I’d fail at […]” (Swofford, 207)
He felt that USMC was the only way for him and he felt prepared for it and
ready to join the ranks (The Book Show #1246). The greater was the sense of defeat,
when he could not follow his calling.
In the interview for WAMC3 he states that he perfectly understands the reasons
of his parents for postponing his application for the USMC, since the promise of making
a fine killer out of one’s child does not intrigue as much parents as expected, but still
the disenchantment was beyond measure for the teenager (The Book Show #1246).
3
Northeast Public Radio
225.4 THE NATURE OF SWOFFORD’S WAR
After providing the details and analysis of Swofford’s pre-military life I will
now focus on the major factor of his narrative and that is the introduction of American
armed forces, including Swofford’s unit, into the conflict that would become to be
known as the First Gulf War.
In this part of my thesis I will analyze Swofford’s mind-set, during his
deployment in the Desert and the major events that played role in shaping him into the
author, who wrote the Jarhead.
Soon after his arrival at the airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on August 14, 1990,
Swofford states that it matters little to him and his fellow Marines how the war will end.
He is not there to care about politics, however absurd he might find them- he is there to
kill, and likely be killed, just two days after his twentieth birthday (Swofford, 10).
“[…] we laugh to obscure the tragedy of […] being deployed to
protect oil reserves and the rights and profits of certain American
companies, many of which have direct ties to the White House and
oblique financial entanglements with the secretary of defense, Dick
Cheney, and the commander in chief, George Bush […] And at this point
we also know that the outcome of the conflict is less important for us- the
men who will fight and die- than for the old white fuckers and others
who have billions of dollars to gain or lose […]” (Swofford, 11).
This tragic note that Swofford brings up in his book, first published in 2003, just
some three weeks before the beginning of the controversial second invasion to Iraq,
which the UN did not give clearance for, resonates in minds of many people and not just
the military personnel. What is so unnerving about this statement is that Swofford, and
23likely other people, knew about how bizarre the conflict is, but unlike the non-military
population Swofford did not have the chance to voice his opinion. Broyles comes with
this statement: “The truth is, the reasons don’t matter. There is a reason for every war
and a war for every reason.“ (Broyles, 1984) and it can be applied to Swofford’s
situation perfectly. His tour of duty must be fulfilled, no matter what the personal
feelings, about the conflict, are. But still, he is very frank about what he thinks about the
nature of the conflict “[…] we fought for the oil-landed families living in the places
deep with gold, shaded by tall and courtly palm trees.” (Swofford, 240).
A question rises what have all these people been doing in the Desert during their
stay there. Trooper’s primary occupation, for the time being, was to wait and keep
hydrated, as Swofford states (Swofford, 11). That is what they did most of the time, but
during their waiting and hydrating, the real labor occurred inside their heads.
“We look north toward what we’re told is a menacing military,
four hundred thousand or more war-torn and war-savvy men. Some of
the Iraqi soldiers who fought during the eight-year Iran-Iraq War
(September 1980 to August 1988) began tasting combat when we were
ten years old.” (Swofford, 11)
Even before the actual fighting begins the Iraq armed forces have the upper hand
in the psychological warfare. This is happening without their participation. Their
infamous status is a hear-say based on something somebody heard somewhere, but even
something like this has a profound effect on the morale of the young Americans.
24After their six weeks in the Kingdom of Saud a spark of excitement appears- the
reporters are finally coming. First civilians, who would meet the deployed Marines in
weeks, the atmosphere among the men was close to ecstatic.
“Knowing the reporters will arrive soon, we shave for the first
time in a week, pull new cammies from the bottoms of our rucks, and
helmet-wash our pits and crotches and cocks. Vann’s wife sent him a
bottle of cologne, and we each dab a bit on our neck and our chest.”
(Swofford, 13)
But the excitement does not get to last long as the commanding officer Sergeant
Dunn and Staff Sergeant Siek tells the men what topics they will avoid in the
conversations with the reporters. The outspoken voice of the group is Kuehn who says
the public thoughts “This is censorship. You’re telling me what I can and can’t say to
the press. That is un-American.” (Swofford, 14) the immediate response from Staff
Sergeant Siek is: “You do as you’re told. You signed the contract. You have no rights
[…] There is no such thing as speech that is free.” (Swofford, 14). The men are not
happy with this, but there is not a thing they can do, because Siek is right- they are
government property and now they must learn how to act like such.
And the reporters are very much aware of the fact, that the men were already
scripted. They know because they have been told the same proud patriotic lines in every
camp they have been to and there is no chance to hear something true, anything
different form the usual lines the young Marines have to offer, such as “Yes, ma’am, I
believe in our mission […] I’m proud of our president standing up to the evil […] This
is about freedom, not oil […] I’m proud to serve my country […] I’m proud of what the
Corps has made me.” (Swofford, 16)
25This does not mean that the men do not feel the need to speak to the reporters
one on one about the way they feel about the whole operation. Swofford gets the closest
to expressing his thoughts, when he is offered a football by the reporter, which he
throws with a fellow squad mate, while the reporter is with them.
“I don’t care about human rights violations in Kuwait City.
Amnesty International, my ass. Rape them all, kill them all, sell their oil,
pillage their gold, sell their children into prostitution. I don’t care about
the Flag and God and Country and Corps. I don’t give a fuck about oil
and revenue and million barrels per day and U.S. jobs. […] I’m twenty
years old and I was dumb enough to sign a contract […] I can hear their
bombs and I am afraid.” (Swofford, 17)
Swofford feels this anxiety after weeks in the all invading sand and the endless
waiting. This monologue proves that no matter how rigorous the brainwashing and the
indoctrination of the famed fighting force is the individual still survives to think
critically about the situation they are put in. The statement itself is full of force. It is a
call of desperation of a young and lost soul. Any amount of the processed truth, which
the command offers, does not help the individual get over the absurdity of the situation.
Swofford is young and unimpressed and most of all he is afraid, because the end of his
life seems almost within a hand’s reach.
5.4.1 ABOUT FOOTBALL AND FIELD FUCK
What immediately follows the time killing activity of throwing the ball is the
infamous and dehumanizing MOPP suit football game. Broyles’s quote “War, since it
steals our youth, offers a sanction to play boys’ games.” (Broyles, 1984) could not be
more accurate. To add even more volume to the absurdity of the situation, the suits are
26in jungle camouflage. This would surely prove to be an extreme tactical advantage in
the desert. During the game, the heat inside the suit reaches 60 degrees Celsius. “I think
of fighting with this gear on and I hope, more than anything, that if we are going to war,
and they are going to kick our asses, that they’ll do it with an A-bomb […] And soon.”
(Swofford, 19).
Siek calls the teams for a demonstration of the drinking tubes build into the
MOPP suits to tell the reporters “Aren’t we smart, we’ve thought of everything.”
(Swofford, 19) but the demonstration goes poorly as the men have been carrying the
suits around for weeks and now most of the suits are not in the shape that could protect
the wearer. Swofford decides to make the situation even more unfavorable for Staff
Sergeant Siek as he, with his existentialist attitude, says: “I requested a new gas mask
four months ago […] we have unserviceable filters in our masks. We’re all dead. We
are the ghosts of STA 2/7.” (Swofford, 20), this enrages Siek even further and he orders
the men to resume the game. The men are exhausted and their morale is falling apart.
During the resumed game the situation escalates into a human pyramid fight for the
king of the mountain. Siek lost control of his men and nobody is capable of stopping
them. And the reporters are all there to witness how America’s finest behave in extreme
conditions. The Field Fuck is about to commence. What the Field Fuck demonstrates is
the men’s resistance, a fight against all odds, a shriek of defiance in the face of vanity,
all shaped into a scene during, during which the men grab their buddy Kuehn and act
out a rape scene.
“I feel frightened and exhilarated by the scene. The exhilaration
isn’t sexual, it’s communal- a pure surge of passion and violence and
shared anger, a pure distillation of our confusion and hope and shared
27fear. We aren’t field-fucking Kuehn; we’re fucking the press-pool
colonel[…] and President Bush and Dick Cheney and the generals, and
Saddam Hussein […] we’re fucking our confusion and fear and boredom;
we’re fucking ourselves for signing the contract […] we’re angry and
afraid and acting the way we’ve been trained to kill, violently and with
no remorse […] (Swofford, 22)
This quote is a portrait of Swofford’s, and not only his, feelings about the whole
adventure in the Desert. I see it as one of the fundamental scenes of the book, because
through Swofford’s explicit language, the audience receives the kind of feeling the men
had and can relate to the various subjects touched by Swofford. It is because the men
are young, full of sexual energy and taught a set of murdering skills, that this ventilation
of all the negatives manifests itself as a violent sexual act, with which the men shake off
and laugh off the built up stress and other negative influences like confusion, distrust of
the Government or boredom, which Swofford mentions.
Boredom is a well known phenomena of military life and another author of a
war narrative refers to it, acknowledging Swofford himself “Our days overflowed with
extreme boredom […] I remembered the painful vigil of waiting described in Jarhead,
Anthony Swofford’s classic Gulf War memoir” (Rieckhoff, Chasing Ghosts: A Soldier's
Fight for America from Baghdad to Washington, 26).
After this scene Swofford faints and has a flashback into childhood in Japan, as I
have analyzed before. If there was any punishment from Staff Sergeant Siek, which is
very likely to have been, it is not mentioned and it is right to presume that no
punishment could spoil the great vent of the Field Fuck.
28Field Fuck as helpful as it is for the audience, it does not provide with much of
long-term help. Swofford still does not feel any better over the situation. He could be at
peace with the lies he is fed by the chain of command and the heat and sand of the
Desert, he could be even at peace with the enemy he is in war with, but he cannot get to
be at peace with himself.
5.4.2 WRITING HOME AND SEXUAL FRUSTRATION
On occasional down-time, which seems more than occasional during the war,
Swofford writes many letters. These letters serve as a means of escaping the present.
“At times I thought I might write myself away, fit my entire body and mind into a few
thick envelopes, and that way, as a stowaway, escape the ghastly end that awaited me.”
(Swofford, 37)
Letters play another role in the narrative. A role of much different than the one
of soothing. The letters from home are almost never soothing for Swofford. The most
problematic are the letters from Swofford’s girlfriend Kristina, who is unfaithful,
Swofford believes.
“Kristina, the woman I’m currently supposed to love, the woman
who is supposed to love me, is having sex with someone else […] I know
the sex is occurring, because she has called him a good friend and a great
listener […] I imagined that soon she’d be sleeping with one of the
[hotel] clerks.” (Swofford, 69)
Whether or not Kristina was faithful remains unseen, but it matters little to
Swofford as his mind is set on the impulses she had provided him with. After his
contemplation about the fidelity of his girlfriend, comes his suicide attempt, which is
stopped by his platoon mate Troy. Earlier in my thesis I have put forth the reasons for
29his near suicide as not to be linked with Kristina’s actions back home. Those reasons are
much heavier pro-suicide arguments, certainly more profound compared to partner’s
infidelity.
Swofford mentions Kristina when he gets drunk, in this scene he starts burning
the letters he received from Kristina. He is sure of the impermanence of things, namely
relationships, which are artificially held together by the need of the moment. “In the
lower right corner of her letters, two imp-like creatures are holding hands under a palm
tree, with a caption floating in clouds that reads “Tony and Kristina Forever.” The
stationery makes me ill […]” (Swofford, 91).
This passage is evidence of Swofford not valuing his relationship with Kristina.
It is a proof that he is emotionally distant from the life he left back home. This distance
is disturbing since he does no longer feel engaged in personal matters outside the
military world.
His emotional distance is even more stressed out when he holds an auction of
Kristina’s seminude photos. The auction is a failure as the only buyer backs down
because “[…] That bitch is damaged goods,” Troy says. “Right now she’s dorking some
hotel clerk. Unfaithful is unfaithful. I don’t want her photo. I got better jerking material
in my head. […]” (Swofford, 90)
Swofford draws a line behind his relationship, when he attaches the photos to the
Wall of Shame, a place where marines put up the photos of their unfaithful partners for
all other marines to be aware. Motivation for a public display of the fact that one was
betrayed by their loved ones is always different and Swofford does not provide any
analysis why would anybody want to perform this symbolic pillory of the other person.
30He attaches Kristina’s photos and inscribes a message for other marines “I don’t know,
but I’ve been told she’s seeing someone new.” (Swofford, 92). He minimizes his status
of the one being betrayed through the act of becoming a remote viewer (Peebles,
Welcome to the Suck: Narrating the American Soldier's Experience in Iraq, 31).
Swofford blames the amount of undirected sexual energy, the sexual frustration
of the marines, to the fact, that there is no place in Saudi Arabia to ventilate it, unlike
other places, where the Americans have waged their wars (Swofford, 92).
Since there are no women to be seen in the general vicinity of the marines, they
feel this way. Unlike in other conflicts, there is not a single native woman to be looked
at, raped, bought or courted. This is troubling for the young men as they were used to a
vast amount of sexual experiences during their training deployment in the Philippines.
Swofford during his war experience in the Desert mentions only once a native woman
and aside from the reporter, who visited them, she is the only woman in the Desert.
This single woman is encountered, when the unit is passed by a Saudi Mercedes-
Benz with a male driver and a woman passenger wearing a hijab. The marines left a
poor image concerning their manners.
“Crocket stands in the back of the Humvee [and] puts his other
hand to his mouth, licking his tongue between two fingers […] woman
sits alone in the backseat of the car, and I watch her eyes follow
Crocket’s crude gesture. I don’t know if she’s registering shock or
confusion of disgust […] and Crocket says, “that bitch will never forget
me. She wanted me.” (Swofford, 140)
31Through this act the men fail to establish any friendly connection with the native
woman or the natives in general. The immediate argument might be that the marines are
not there to make friends. Even though this argument is valid, the truth is that, as Stacey
L. Peebles states, “These soldiers fight as representatives of the nation […]” (Peebles,
25) and as such the marines fail to express the famous hearts and minds methodology
adopted by the U.S. military. For comparison a fellow combatant, Rieckhoff, establishes
friendly terms with the native he dubbed as Big Foot, by getting him a pair of new shoes
and he comments on this situation “One pair of shoes has done more than a hundred
bullets could ever have to win that man to our side forever.” (Rieckhoff, 245).
This scene marks a clash of cultures but also brings up the topic of sexual
frustration in the military. Swofford ends the chapter after this scene and offers the
audience no further comment on the subject, because there is no further comment
needed, the scene is self-explanatory. Stacey L. Peebles focuses on the connection
between sexual frustration and violence depicted in Jarhead in the first chapter of her
work. Her arguments are sound, but nothing new on the topic compared to William
Broyles and his work on the topic. Furthermore she makes factual mistakes like labeling
Swofford as an infantry man instead of a scout/sniper, despite he clearly states himself
“above” the average infantry man on many occasions throughout the book, this is also
something Geoffrey A. Wright points out in his review of Peebles’s book (2011, 241).
The sexual frustration that the men feel is likely to lead to further acts of
violence, which eventually do occur. While most men in the truck refrained to partake
in the vulgar act, Crocket, the unmarried man, committed fully. Another clearly
sexually frustrated man is Fowler, who is always chasing prostitutes during leave. But
now, there is no shore leave to vent his urges in sight. It is also Fowler, first violating
32the conventions of warfare, when he shoots and kills a Bedouin camel and, further on in
Swofford’s narrative, proceeds to hack and disfigure the bodies of dead Iraqi soldiers
(Swofford 162).
The profound connection between sex and violence has been explored in an
article on the web page of Psychology today.
“[…] war-like societies intentionally cultivate sexual frustration
in young men because their resulting aggressiveness makes them better
soldiers, much like boxing trainers making fighters swear off women.
Criminologists have long known that unmarried young men commit the
bulk of the crimes in the United States.“ (Ryan, On Sex and Violence)
And Swofford wholeheartedly confirms the message related in the article. “And
the pleasure of [violence] is like the pleasure of cocaine or a good rough fuck.”
(Swofford, 64). In his work Why Men Love War (1984), William Broyles also proposes
this link between sex and war.
“It’s lure is the fundamental human passion to witness, to see
things, what the Bible calls lust for the eye and the Marines in Vietnam
called eye fucking […] Most men who have been to war, and most
women who have been around it, remember that never in their lives did
they have so heightened a sexuality. War is, in short, a turn-on.” (Broyles,
1984).
What seems to relieve the sexual tension these men feel are the, so called, Any
Marine letters. These are letters usually written by young women to provide
33encouragement to unknown fighting men. Obviously, the most valued letters are those,
which have explicit content.
“Atticus’s letter is […] from a recent university dropout: I just
quit Yale. I like to fuck a lot and drop acid. Write me soon if you like to
fuck a lot and drop acid. Thanks. Obviously, Atticus has hit the vein. The
other Any Marines look defeated. […] I like to fuck a lot and drop acid
becomes one of our rallying calls, better than Ohh-rah or Semper fi.
Atticus writes the Acid Girl […] She never replies. This saddens us all.”
(Swofford, 142)
These letters are not meant to create any long term relationships. They are only
there to provide the authors with a feeling that they are doing their part for the Coalition
to Free Kuwait. The men gather for some fun and sometimes excitement (as it was with
the Acid Girl). The purpose is served and soon it is a burden. “Eventually so many Any
Marine letters are floating around battalion that they’ve become a nuisance.” (Swofford,
143)
Troy tells Swofford to stop thinking about the Any Marines letters or the letters,
which Swofford writes to several women he had (or wishes) to have sex with. This
comes after Swofford receives photos from his mother’s wedding and since he is
obviously taken by those images Troy comments on them.
“[Troy] says, “Hell, Swoff, it looks to me like your mom just
married some fat dude. Bitch didn’t even ask your permission […] she
can’t wait for you to come home before she goes and gets married. […]”
34“I think some people are waiting […] Jenn and Katherine are
waiting for me.”
“[…] Jenn and Katherine only know the bullshit you write to
them. If you were in the States, they wouldn’t write those letters to you.”
(Swofford, 148)
In this excerpt Troy provides Swofford with explanations for reasons, why
different people write to Swofford. In the end of this scene Swofford undergoes a
drastic change of relationship with his mother. Lisa-Andrea Glatz comments on
Swofford’s relationship with women in her essay and remarks that the only all positive
relationship he has, a relationship which works for both sides involved, is the mother-
son relationship. (Glatz,
of the Gulf War and other Battles, 1). It comes as somewhat of an epiphany to Swofford
and he manages to realize that the world outside his war does not stop for other people,
who are not a part of the war effort, and wait for him. This realization brings him no
closer to clarity or comfort.
5.4.3 THE PAIN OF (NOT) KILLING
In this section I will focus on the two important scenes of the book, which
revolve around the acquisition of a kill. These scenes concern the possibility of killing a
friendly and Swofford’s first confirmed kill-to-be.
Friendly fire ranks among the most lamentable things, which occur in war. Its
dictionary definition is follows:
“friendly fire (noun), during a war, shooting that is hitting you from your own
side, not from the enemy“ (Cambridge Dictionary)
35This occurs in most cases accidentally, because the soldiers are, under normal
circumstances, careful enough not to endanger their fellow soldiers by inaccurate fire.
That was not Swofford’s case. What triggered the situation was the incompetence of
Swofford and his inability to promote clearly the benefits of staying awake during night
watch to Dettmann.
Swofford got to be the highest ranking member of the team, while the team
leader was away and it was his duty to ensure that nothing goes poorly the night before
the team’s first opportunity for rifle time at a long range in three months. And things go
poorly as Dettmann falls asleep and the team oversleeps and misses their time at the
range (Swofford, 98).
Since Swofford is the highest ranking person he also takes the fall for
Dettmann’s failure. The punishment is thorough- he is forced to drink vast quantities of
water and perform various calisthenics until he vomits only to repeat the cycle many
times over. But the worst punishment for Swofford is the shitter detail, where he is
supposed to burn the waste of the whole company for a week. He is eventually so
infuriated with Dettmann that he threatens him with his rifle loaded with live
ammunition.
“I know this is crazy and reckless, but I think Dettmann might
learn something, I don’t know what. And I know that if in a second I say
Fuck it and pull the trigger, I’ll be able to lie my way through an
accidental discharge […] I’ll be the fuck out of Saudi Arabia and the
endless waiting and the various other forms of mental and physical waste,
and also, I’ll finally know what it feels like to kill a man.” (Swofford,
103)
36You can also read
