jarhead book summary

I don't mean they are all coming home crazy, but it just can't be good for the mind or soul of anyone! If you go into this book expecting fire fights, skirmishes, battles and sorties, then you are coming at this book from the wrong direction, or you have the wrong book. He humorously considers what he might look like to a passerby: a “mad old warrior going through his memorabilia, juicing up before he runs off and kills a few with precision fire.”, This moment reveals a characteristic concern with images, which permeates the book. Moment by moment, image by image, the reader is given an intimate view of Swoffie’s coming-of-age in the Marine Corps and his madness in the Middle East. At the end of the war, Swofford hiked for miles through a landscape of incinerated Iraqi soldiers and later was nearly killed in a booby-trapped Iraqi bunker. You join the military thinking I'm gonna go kick doors in, blow stuff up, and end human lives when in all actuality most service members never see combat of any type. For instance, Swofford describes a moment after the war has ended where he and his platoon mates get to use the captured enemy ammunition and weapons to shoot whatever they want. Soldiers fight because they have no choice, because even though they wish they had never joined they're stuck there now, and because that is where the outlet for their addiction is provided. After leaving military service, the author went on to college and earned a double master's degree in Fine Arts at the University of Iowa. This review is for Jarhead by Anthony Swofford; published by POCKET BOOKS in 2005 at 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020. This chapter is concerned with a variety of images, including the psychological images the marine colonel is trying to impress on the reporters and the artistic... (The entire section contains 1765 words.). As the reader learns, these films, although purportedly antiwar, exploit public fascination with war even as they condemn it. Instead of playing poker with the other marines, I’m hiding in my truck reading The Iliad and Camus’s The Stranger; that’s not pretentious. For instance, Swofford describes a moment after the war has. Motivated and ready to die if needs be just to get told sorry you're just gonna have to go on ahead and sit this one out while still going through the torture of being semi-involved.

This is not an easy book to read. This has nothing to do with the 1st gulf war. This ambivalence is the most interesting part of the book, and makes it potentially an important snapshot of post-Cold War American military ennui. You join the military thinking I'm gonna go kick doors in, blow stuff up, and end human lives when in all actuality most service members never see combat of any type. felt cheated, in the end, because instead of the death, danger, and glory they were promised, the Gulf War didn't end up being an infantry war at all — it was an air-and-armor turkey-shoot, and ended in far less time than it took to prepare for. It makes it so clear how damaging it is to these young men to be kept in such a prolonged state of battle readiness for...nothing! And yet there have been the numerous encounters with poignant, eerie tableaux of dead Iraqi soldiers who'd been killed so quickly where they sat so as to appear to have been deliberately posed, like store-display mannequins, in their final moments of life. One of the through lines of his first-person account involves the challenge of balancing the art and science and mind-set of the warrior with one's own basic sense of humanity.

Instead of a book that reflects all soldiers’ experiences with war, it is only a reflection of one soldier’s experience with war. When the U.S. Marines -- or "jarheads" -- were sent to Saudi Arabia in 1990 for the first Gulf War, Anthony Swofford was there. When the marines -- or "jarheads," as they call themselves -- were sent in 1990 to Saudi Arabia to fight the Iraqis, Swofford was there, with a hundred-pound pack on his shoulders and a sniper's rifle in his hands. Having seen the film years ago, I'd always wanted to read the book.

One of a growing number of Gulf War memoirs, Anthony Swofford ’s Jarhead earned considerable critical attention when it was first published.

I read and listened to this on CD.

The memoir begins in 2003, with the narrator rooting through his mementos of the Gulf War, which he keeps in his Marine Corps rucksack in his basement.

Log in here.

After reading this memoir of Anthony Swofford I found that I can definitely recommend this book to others. A Marine’s Chronicle Of The Gulf War And Other Battles.

This is the most realistic look at war from the viewpoint of any service member. This book irritated the heck out of me; I found it completely overrated. Unabashed and unrelenting, this is an incredible read. Jarhead is a 2003 Gulf War memoir by author and former U.S. Marine Anthony Swofford.

That doesn't mean it isn't well-written, which it is, or that it lacks action, because it doesn't. While the majority of the reviews of the book have been positive, not everyone feels that way. Either the marines I know are aberrations, or Swofford is the aberration.

And the description of the joy and relief and rage that finally gets to be released in this moment of testosterone and war is spot-on.

It has to do with the ramblings of an immoral, narcissistic misogynist with a chip on his shoulder who should have been kicked out of the Marine Corps during 1st phase. Anthony Swofford is a former United States Marine and author of the book Jarhead, published in 2003, which is primarily based on his accounts of various situations encountered in the first Gulf War. Even if read as an account of how combat feels to the average “jarhead” (the marine “high-and-tight” haircut makes the head look like a jar), Swofford’s work is inadequate because it is based solely on point of view of a presumably atypical marine: a very perceptive, bookish marine nicknamed “Swoffie.”. Those who read Jarhead for this purpose, however, may be disappointed because the narrator experiences combat only briefly, describing his experience as a target for Iraqi artillery and rockets and friendly fire from Marine Corps tank gunners. ", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jarhead_(book)&oldid=972715714, Non-fiction books about the United States Marine Corps, United States military history book stubs, Articles needing additional references from June 2016, All articles needing additional references, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 13 August 2020, at 13:38. Its publication coincided with the United States’ military preparations for a second conflict with Iraq, and the memoir’s subtitle, A Marine’s Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles, surely attracted readers who wanted to know what combat in the desert was like. People seem to either love this book or hate it, taking it as an honest account of the nasty, brutish and short lives of Marine grunts or as a trumped-up, pretentious load of BS. That doesn't mean it isn't well-written, which it is, or that it lacks action, because it doesn't. It dispels the illusion we all harbor to one degree or another that war is noble and that warriors are likewise noble. I rated Jarhead with a 3 because it was an exciting story, but didn't give a very good image for the Marine Corps. “My despair is less despair than boredom and loneliness.”, “If while alive you hurt or disappoint people you love, there's no use continuing such behavior when you're dead.”, PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the Art of the Memoir (2004), November's Most Anticipated Young Adult Reads.

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