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Brunner
Jenkins is a young, white private who is assigned to the same company as Richie Perry, Peewee, and Johnson. Jenkins’ father, an army colonel, forced Jenkins to volunteer, hoping that he would go to Officers Candidate School at the end of his tour in Vietnam. But Jenkins is terrified and can barely keep himself together on the trip from Saigon to Alpha Company’s firebase. He dies at the conclusion of his first patrol, after stepping on a land mine.
Jenkins Quotes in Fallen Angels
The Fallen Angels quotes below are all either spoken by Jenkins or refer to Jenkins. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 4
Quotes
The village was a good ten minutes away and everybody seemed relaxed. I wasn’t. I was scared.
I had never thought of myself as being afraid of anything. I thought I would always be a middle-of-the-road kind of guy, not too brave, but not too scared, either. I was wrong. I was scared every time I left the hooch.
On the way to the chopper, I found myself holding my breath. I kept thinking of the noise I had heard when Jenkins got it. By the time we took off I was panting.
Related Characters:
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Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7
Quotes
An image of the VC we had killed flashed through my mind. I wondered if he had a family? Had he been out on a patrol? When did he know he was going to die?
What was worse than thinking about him dead was the way we looked at him. At least we had cared for Jenkins, had trembled when he died. He was one of us, an American, a human. But the dead Vietnamese soldier, his body sprawled out in the mud, was no longer a human being. He was a thing, a trophy. I wondered if I would become a trophy.
“We won.” Walowick came in after the volleyball game and sat on the edge of the bunk. “They’re paying us off in beer.”
“Way to go,” I said.
“You okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Seeing that dead gook mess you up some?”
“A little,” I said. “Maybe even more than Jenkins.”
“Who’s Jenkins?”
Chapter 11
Quotes
The war was different now. Nam was different. Jenkins had been outside of me, even the guys in Charlie Company had been outside. Lieutenant Carroll was inside of me, he was part of me. Part of me was dead with him. I wanted to be sad, to cry for him, maybe bang my fists against the sides of the hooch. But what I felt was numb. I just had these pictures of him walking along with us on patrol or sitting in the mess area, looking down into a coffee cup. It was what I was building in my mind, a series of pictures of things I had seen, of guys I had seen. I found myself trying to push them from my mind, but they seemed more and more a part of me.
Get the entire Fallen Angels LitChart as a printable PDF.
Jenkins Quotes in Fallen Angels
The Fallen Angels quotes below are all either spoken by Jenkins or refer to Jenkins. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 4
Quotes
The village was a good ten minutes away and everybody seemed relaxed. I wasn’t. I was scared.
I had never thought of myself as being afraid of anything. I thought I would always be a middle-of-the-road kind of guy, not too brave, but not too scared, either. I was wrong. I was scared every time I left the hooch.
On the way to the chopper, I found myself holding my breath. I kept thinking of the noise I had heard when Jenkins got it. By the time we took off I was panting.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7
Quotes
An image of the VC we had killed flashed through my mind. I wondered if he had a family? Had he been out on a patrol? When did he know he was going to die?
What was worse than thinking about him dead was the way we looked at him. At least we had cared for Jenkins, had trembled when he died. He was one of us, an American, a human. But the dead Vietnamese soldier, his body sprawled out in the mud, was no longer a human being. He was a thing, a trophy. I wondered if I would become a trophy.
“We won.” Walowick came in after the volleyball game and sat on the edge of the bunk. “They’re paying us off in beer.”
“Way to go,” I said.
“You okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Seeing that dead gook mess you up some?”
“A little,” I said. “Maybe even more than Jenkins.”
“Who’s Jenkins?”
Chapter 11
Quotes
The war was different now. Nam was different. Jenkins had been outside of me, even the guys in Charlie Company had been outside. Lieutenant Carroll was inside of me, he was part of me. Part of me was dead with him. I wanted to be sad, to cry for him, maybe bang my fists against the sides of the hooch. But what I felt was numb. I just had these pictures of him walking along with us on patrol or sitting in the mess area, looking down into a coffee cup. It was what I was building in my mind, a series of pictures of things I had seen, of guys I had seen. I found myself trying to push them from my mind, but they seemed more and more a part of me.
