Phil Klay's Redeployment Analysis

In Phil Klay’s Redeployment, the war in Iraq is described as an intense masculine experience. Through the pages, the presence of women is marginal, if there is any woman in the short stories, and the reader enters in a realm of men and, more important, of what it means to be a real man. The assumption of war as a complete masculine experience might seem pretty obvious; however, Phil Klay is able to offer a crude and clear depiction of it. The author tells twelve different short stories of men who have only one thing in common: the experience of the Iraq War. But this is not simply a book about the war, but also about the consequences that this terrible experience has on the soldiers. Kley describes this alternative universe, which can be really understood only by a soldier, using its own language.

The narrator of this story, a priest, says that Marines find different ways to come to the chapel to talk to him, such as going there simply to take some candies from his provisions, in order not to admit with the other Marines that they need to talk to someone. However, even when they have overcome this barrier and are able to talk about their problems–in this case the allegation that Marines are making no distinction between insurgents and civilians and, thus, are killing innocent people–nobody but the priest seems to be willing to listen to them. In fact, the clergyman tries to talk to address this issue with the people in charge of the military operation, but they dismiss him, claiming that there is nothing wrong. The story ends with a list of people who committed suicide after deployment, many names that are mentioned for the first and last time, and the last note of one of them. It is impossible not to wonder if all these people killed themselves because of what they had seen and done in Iraq, or because they could never really talk about