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Youth And Innocence In Fallen Angels By Lieutenant Carroll

892 Words4 Pages

The title of the novel Fallen Angels is the theme of youth and innocence. As Lieutenant Carroll explains in Chapter 4, all soldiers are “angel warriors,” because the soldiers are still young boys and still as innocent as angels. Richie tells the story in the first person, giving us immediate, intimate access to his thoughts and feelings as the action unfolds. The army’s failure to process Richie’s medical file properly hints that Richie will not receive a medical discharge and will have to fight; the army’s bureaucratic mix-up at the airport in Osaka previews the general chaos of war and the ineffectiveness of trying to control that chaos. Richie joins the army with illusions and myths about war. He learned about war from movies and …show more content…

The protagonist of the story is Richie Perry. He is smart and very athletic. He had goals to become a college basketball player but is unable to afford school due to living with his poor mom in Harlem. He joins the military at age 17 because he knows that there is nothing better coming for him. Throughout the book, he realizes that war is not an exciting glamorous thing and his perception of the world is greatly changed. The static of this story is that he is unable to go to college because of his mom could not afford it. The antagonist in the story is the Vietcong. Day in and day out the American soldiers are fighting them. They are brutally aggressive and often suicidal. In a larger sense it is really they are defending the communist influence and that influence is the antagonist. The inference and motive of this story are when he had a dream of becoming a college basketball, but he did not because of his mom not having any money to help him so he had to join the military, knowing that nothing else is here for …show more content…

At first, Richie’s experience in Vietnam makes him only more doubtful and confused. The carnage, senseless murders, and completely antiheroic nature of the battlefield leave him reeling, adding to his doubts about right and wrong and the morality of the war. Richie struggles with these difficult issues but never finds satisfactory answers. The author did develop a parallel plot of his storyline the plot of the story, Richie Perry, a poor black teen from Harlem joins the military during the Vietnam War. He had a bad knee injury from playing basketball and they tell him that he will be sent to Vietnam but only to be a desk worker at a major base there. When he gets there he is informed that his medical records were not there and he was going to be sent into an active company. The conflict of this story is when he was in the army and he got a knee injury, the still sent him to Vietnam as a to work behind the table. Themes, Motifs, and symbols. Uncertain of his future goals, seventeen-year-old Richie Perry, a black high school graduate from Harlem, travels to Vietnam to fight in the United States

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