JARHEAD ，

Author: ANTHONYSWOFFORD
Publisher: POCKETSTAR
Publication Date: 2005-09-01
Features: War is a harsh and forcing method to make men grow up. This book tells the story of Swofford's experiences in the Iraq War through a "death humor" style. His initial enthusiasm for joining the military was replaced by pain, and his courage turned into confusion and doubt. The novel contains satire on war and close portrayals of friendship. Defending one's homeland should be fearless, but in war, it becomes a contradictory and ambiguous emotion... In the summer of 1990, Anthony Swofford, a third-generation soldier at the age of twenty, was sent to the desert of Saudi Arabia to fight in the Gulf War. In 2003, he wrote a best-selling book "Jarhead" based on his combat experiences. With an honest and humorous pen, he narrates the hardships of a young soldier's training and the long, frustrating wait before the war. Swofford's work spent nine weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list and was praised as "a classic... this is an unforgettable memoir of the 1991 Gulf War, and one of the finest works about military life. It truthfully describes the shared experiences of millions of young soldiers." His portrayal of the Gulf War is completely different from the major newspapers or television news reports. The story depicts a group of crude, lustful, and dirty rookie soldiers who felt both excited and scared about the possibility of war starting at any moment, while also being frustrated and disappointed by the possibility that it might not happen. These young men were suddenly sent to a treacherous desert area, and before the war, their only way to pass the time and vent their energy was to play American football with gas masks, wait for letters and yellow magazines from home, bet on scorpion battles, or get drunk on Christmas far from home. These American soldiers disliked each other, had little understanding of the political situation, and were unsure if they would get the benefits they wanted from serving. However, in this hellish life, they also developed a brotherhood willing to sacrifice for each other, a promise that these so-called "jarheads" vowed to keep forever.... When the marines—or "jarheads," as they call themselves—were sent to Saudi Arabia in 1990 to fight the Iraqis, Swofford was there, with a hundred-pound pack on his shoulders and a sniper's rifle in his hands. It was one misery upon another. He lived in the sand for six months, his girlfriend back home betrayed him for a scrawny hotel clerk, he was punished by boredom and fear, he considered suicide, he pulled a gun on one of his fellow marines, and he was shot at by both Iraqis and Americans. At the end of the war, Swofford hiked for miles through a landscape of incinerated Iraqi soldiers and was later nearly killed in an Iraqi bunker booby-trapped with explosives." Swofford weaves this experience of war with vivid accounts of boot camp (which included physical abuse by his drill instructor), reflections on the myth of the marines, and memories of battles with lovers and family. As engagement with the Iraqis draws closer, he is forced to consider what it is to be an American, a soldier, a son of a soldier, and a man. Unlike the real-time print and television coverage of the Gulf War, which was highly scripted by the Pentagon, Swofford's account subverts the conventional wisdom that U.S. military interventions are now merely surgical insertions of superior forces that result in few American casualties. Jarhead insists we remember the Americans who are actually wounded or killed, the fields of smoking enemy corpses left behind, and the continuing difficulty that American soldiers face re-entering civilian life.