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Youth And Innocence In Fallen Angels By Lieutenant Carroll

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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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People back home were naive to the actions that were being taken in Vietnam because they were lacking in communication. In the novel “Fallen Angels” you can tell that the soldiers were very timid with what they said in their letters that were sent back home. Most letters sent back home were about the little things that brought them joy like playing games with kids. Not many actually said they went into battle or fought in a bullet parade. They would ask them what it's really like over there because they could see what was happening on TV, but media blocked a lot of reality from the war and the graphic effects.

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"I was too shocked to cry, too confused to take notes or ask questions, too bewildered to even think. " said by New York Times correspondent David Halberstam. In Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers talks about how Richie Perry a seventeen-year-old boy stationed in Vietnam. Richie lost his innocence by experiencing too many war tragedies.

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Jeff’s Growth The protagonist of Rifle for Watie by Harold Keith, Jeff Bussey, is one of the many children who were forced to grow up too quickly due to the outbreak of the Civil War. In this historical fiction novel, Jeff is a sixteen year old boy eager to go off to war looking for adventure and excitement like many other boys from that time. Over time, however, Jeff experiences sickness, treachery, friendship, despair, and violence.

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In the beginning of the novel, Perry was an uncertain teen who didn’t know where his place in life was “The real question was what I was doing, what any of us were doing, in Nam” (69). By the middle of the book, Perry started to become doubtful of himself and started to say Jenkins and Carroll died because of him “In a way i felt real bad just for being alive to write it” (110). And by the last few chapters he really starts to lose his way and lose his judgement from right and wrong “Maybe when we all got back to the world and everybody thought we were heroes for winning it, then it would seem right from there” (229). During my reading of Fallen Angels, I began to notice the theme, and I think the theme is that War is devastating to people because it can totally mess you up psychologically and physically.

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Danielle Currey Ms. Serensky AP English Language 8 September 2015 The Other Wes Moore SOAPSTone Subjects “choices”(xiv). “family”(xiv). “mistakes”(179). “military”(54).

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Have you ever wondered what life was like for soldiers in the Vietnam War, in between fighting? In the novel Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers, Perry, a seventeen-year-old high school graduate from Harlem, has been sent to Nam to fight in the Vietnam War. There, he meets many soldiers like him who are struggling with mental health because of the trauma and stress they developed during their time in Vietnam. The novel focuses on the development of PTSD in a soldier's life as well as the bond between soldiers. They also include how soldiers stay connected with their families through writing letters, even though they are far away from home.

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Walter Dean Myers titled this book “Fallen Angels.” What is a “fallen angel?” In the biblical standpoint it is an angel that revolted against God. This book was mainly about people fighting in the Vietnam War. Some survived and some didn’t.

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