54 pages • 1 hour read
If I Die in a Combat Zone: Box Me Up and Ship Me Home
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Essay Topics
If I Die in a Combat Zone consists of twenty-three short chapters and an afterword. The chapters are not always in chronological order. Why might O'Brien have structured his book this way? How does this structure support or contradict his views about war?
Chapters 16 and 22 take their titles from the Socratic dialogue Laches, in which Socrates and Laches discuss the nature of courage. What does O'Brien think courage is? Is he courageous, by his own definition? In what ways does he fail to live up to his definition of courage?
The shadow of the My Lai Massacre hangs over If I Die in a Combat Zone. In the March 1968 massacres, hundreds of Vietnamese civilians were killed. O'Brien serves in the same area of Vietnam a year later. How is the conduct of O'Brien's Alpha Company, as described in the book, similar to or different from that of Lieutenant Calley's Charlie Company during the My Lai Massacre? What does O'Brien's view of war crimes seem to be?
Women did not serve in combat roles in the Vietnam War, although they did serve there. The women O'Brien and his fellow soldiers encounter are often servants of one kind or another: stewardesses, dancers, sex workers. How do the soldiers relate to women?
Compare Major Callicles to Captain Johansen. Which of them is courageous, according to O'Brien's definition? What about according to their own definitions? What do their departures say about their character?
O'Brien wants, and eventually gets, a job in the rear, far from the fighting. Why does he prize the rear job but take a dim view of malingering? What ways of getting by does O'Brien approve of and take part in?
Why do O'Brien's attempts to resist the draft or go AWOL fizzle out?
Consider Chapter 10, "The Man at the Well," and Chapter 12, "Mori." In one, a soldier of Alpha Company brutalizes an old civilian man. In the other, the soldiers of Alpha Company watch while a young guerilla fighter suffers from her fatal wounds. What accounts for the different ways the soldiers treat these two people?
In Chapter 9, "Ambush," O'Brien contrasts his experiences in Vietnam with those of characters in Ernest Hemingway's fiction. He observes Hemingway wrote about "hideous deaths of tides of human beings" in war but did not write about "the thoughts those men must have had." O'Brien is all about the thoughts he has—his thoughts before the draft, his thoughts in basic training, his thoughts in the rice paddies. His thoughts are complex, nuanced, and deeply, deeply divided. He thinks the war is wrong, but he is in it. Is O'Brien's divided view of the war nuanced or is it a form of cowardice?
Several of the chapter titles borrow from a saying by the Roman poet Horace: Dulce est decorum est pro patria mori. Thus, Chapter 19 is titled "Dulce et Decorum," Chapter 2 is titled "Pro Patria," and Chapter 12 is titled "Mori." The saying from Horace can be translated as "It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. The quotation from Horace also appears in the title of English poet Wilfrid Owen's World War I poem, "Dulce et decorum est." Owen's poem describes the ravages of a gas attack in World War I, and it ends by telling readers that if they could see a man injured by poison gas, with "the blood come gargling from froth-corrupted lungs," they would not tell young people it was honorable to die for their country. Additionally, Erik recites for O'Brien an Ezra Pound poem, called "Hugh Selwyn Mauberly," that also contains the same line from Horace. Choose one of the three chapters—2, 12, or 19—and examine its use of Horace, Owen, and/or Pound.
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By Tim O'Brien
