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Chapter 1
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Fallen Angels, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
War, Trauma, and Dehumanization
Perseverance and Heroism
Race, Identity, and Belonging
Reality and Fiction
Faith and Hope
Summary
Analysis
After a sergeant puts out the lights, Peewee asks Perry what he did “back in the World.” Perry says he joined up after he graduated from high school because it seemed “like a good idea at the time.” He doesn’t say that he couldn’t afford college even though he got good grades. He joined the army hoping to make enough money to support his family while Kenny finishes school. He joined the army because he’s competitive and likes winning, and not being able to go to college and become a writer like James Baldwin—his dream—seemed like losing. Joining the army was a way to escape the questions of his friends and neighbors who assumed he was going to college. A way to look like he was walking away from his childhood “with [his] head raised high, a winner.”
Perry’s reasons for joining the army speak to both his character and American society in the 1960s. Despite his intelligence and sensitivity, his family’s poverty and need prevent him from pursuing his own dreams. But his pride made staying in Harlem feel impossible, too. Readers should note that Perry’s idol, James Baldwin, didn’t go to college, either. This fact holds out the promise that Perry might still find a way to achieve his dreams, if he can survive his time in Vietnam.
Themes
In the morning, Perry asks Peewee if he likes the army. Peewee replies that he likes having the exact same stuff as everyone else—the same boots, the same weapon, the same bad food. During the day, Perry realizes that he sees more Black soldiers than he had expected. One of them, unable to “trust no whitey,” tries to get Perry and Peewee to swear an oath with their “common African” blood with him. But Peewee and Perry want to keep their shared African blood in their own veins. Another Black soldier tells them about getting in trouble for being high on duty. He says he hasn’t seen much fighting during his nine months there.
Peewee’s reasons for joining aren’t exactly the same as Perry’s—he liked school less than his new friend—but they also point to the ways systematic racism and discrimination limited opportunities for Black Americans in the 1960s (and still do today). The army seems better, with its equal treatment of soldiers, but their encounter with the paranoid Black soldier suggests that it too struggles to rein in racism and social division.
Themes
Nine days after he arrived, Perry still hasn’t gotten an assignment. He and Peewee hang out on base, trying to avoid guard duty, playing checkers and ping pong and watching movies in the day room. They hear that the fighting is practically over anyway. They hear that a truce is being negotiated in Paris or somewhere. Perry’s nervousness fades and although he’s not particularly “gung ho,” he feels ready to do his part in stopping the North Vietnamese from taking over South Vietnam—the mission as he understands it.
As Perry relaxes during a brief period of boredom and inactivity, he muses on his rationale for volunteering. He accepts the reasons that the government has given the American people and believes in the moral rightness of the American cause. But readers, from the far side of history, have reason to question these assertions—it’s less about protecting Southern Vietnamese interests than dealing a blow to the USSR-backed Northern Vietnamese communists. Readers know from history that the Americans will eventually abandon their Southern Vietnamese allies, who will lose the war. The tension between historical knowledge and Perry’s initially naive view foreshadows the betrayal he will feel from his own government.
Themes
New soldiers arrive, including an absolutely terrified man called Jenkins. Peewee has some fun at Jenkins’ expense, claiming to have been in Vietnam for eight months. He says that he’s going to go home early, as soon as he kills one “Cong” for every pound of his weight. Peewee insists he only has eight to go until he gets his 240. He also tells Jenkins that he likes to sneak up from behind and slit their throats. The army only gives soldiers so many bullets per week, and they will pay a quarter for each they return. Jenkins finally gets mad when he realizes that Peewee is joking.
Peewee’s surprisingly successful prank on Jenkins points to how little most people back in America actually know about what’s going on in the war. Both Peewee’s glee and Jenkins’ gullibility point, also, towards their extreme youth and inexperience. They’re practically still children, but they’re being asked by the military machine to risk their lives and become killers. Further, Peewee’s silly vision of the war references the kind of swaggering image projected by American war films set in Vietnam during the early years of the conflict.
Themes
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Finally, the soldiers receive their orientation lecture. A youthful lieutenant warns them to stay away from the natives (especially the women, who are rife with venereal diseases), take their malaria pills, avoid the black market, not smoke dope, and try to stay out of the way of RPGs. In response to a soldier’s question, he clarifies that RPGs are rocket-propelled grenades. Their unit commanders will tell them anything else they need to know. As they leave the briefing, swarms of mosquitos attack the soldiers. The lieutenant forgot to mention their army-issued insect repellant. Perry, Peewee, Jenkins, and another guy will go north to join the 196th at Chu Lai. An easy assignment, a sergeant assures them: they just look around for Northern Vietnamese forces or the Vietcong—known as “charlies,” “Victor Charlies,” or “Congs” in army slang—then call in the marines when they find them.
The soldiers’ initial orientation—and the sergeant’s description of Perry’s, Peewee’s, and Jenkins’s assignment—are insufficient for what they’re about to face. The lieutenant barely mentions adversaries and neither he nor the sergeant refer to the Vietcong’s brutal guerrilla tactics. Instead, they both make the war sound like a vacation. And the soldiers seem so unprepared that they can’t even understand the few warnings about combat offered to them, at least not without the officers translating army shorthand clearly. The soldiers heading for the front lines are kept in the dark about the situation they’re walking into.
Themes
Peewee swears he’ll be the first one to kill a “Cong,” and Perry says Peewee can have them all. He admits he’s scared. Peewee says he isn’t; he’s surprised to find out there’s any fighting going on at all. Then he tells Perry how he got into the army. He went with a friend to the recruitment office, and when the army rejected his friend for having already shot four or five people, Peewee figured the army was “cool.” Now he thinks he may have been tricked. He doesn’t understand why the army doesn’t want “[rowdy] suckers from the projects” if it wants killers. Perry and Peewee spit in their palms and shake hands—a lighter version of a blood oath. It feels good. And as they climb into the truck to the airport, Perry’s mouth goes dry with anxiety. Jenkins cries softly.
Perry admits his fear openly to Peewee; Jenkins’s terror is obvious to everyone. Peewee claims not to be scared, but his story reveals that he joined the army because he figured it was less violent (or at least less disordered) than the life he knew in the chaotic Black neighborhoods of segregated Chicago. He clings to hope that the army will provide order and meaning, even amid chaos and bloodshed. This—and the fact that he himself hasn’t participated in that violence—suggests that he’s not as tough as he would like the people around him to think.
Themes
