A character I decided to focus on while reading Fallen Angels was Richie Perry because he was the protagonist . I feel like many people can relate to Richie, he was a smart and talented person with big dreams to go to college and become a writer. His mother was an alcoholic and was not financially stable enough to send him off to college. Richie joined the army escentially to escape all the reality that is going on revolving around his future. “ My plans, maybe just my dreams really, had been to go to college, and write like James Baldwin. All the other guys in the neighborhood thought I was going to college. I wasn't, and the army was the place I was to get away from all the questions”( page 15). I think that Richie joined the army not to fight the war, but to actually get away and escape decisions that he should have been making about his future. Although he was not able to afford college, many of his peers were expecting him to attend college. This could have been embarrassing and shameful of Richie, I think his way of going to the army was so someone else can have authority over him and tell him what to do with himself. Richie does not seem to want to make decisions by himself, and is maybe even a bit clueless and he wants someone else to make decisions for him but will not take the easy way out. I believe Richie Perry survived the war because he was maturing and …show more content…
“ I knew mama loved me, but I also knew when I got back, she would expect me to be the same person, but it could never happen. She hadn’t been to Nam. She hadn't given the poncho to anybody to wrap a body in, or stepped over a dying kid” Richie is aware of the changes he has gone through while serving in the war. He understands that people will expect him to be the same guy he was when he left, but he accepts that he will have to adjust his way of life because of the things he faced and seen in