A soldier as America

In response Church, Stockings and Style  from The Things They Carried

Henry Dobbins is like America because in this chapter, his conversations with Kiowa show that he characterizes America’s ambition, and they’re questioning of the place in the war. At this part they are staying in a pagoda, where seemingly coy Vietnamese monks brought buckets of water each morning. After a few days, it seemed as though the monks got used to their presence. “Though they were kind to all of us, the monks took a special liking to Henry Dobbins. ‘Soldier Jesus,’ they’d say, ‘good soldier Jesus.’” It’s then that Dobbins says he could join them, even though he wasn’t smart enough to be a minister, and Kiowa points out how wrong it was permissible for the monks serve them in a makeshift church when they’re all there to ultimately fight a war. This could be a metaphor to how wrong the war was in the first place. They were fighting an ideology, a war that wasn’t at all Americas’ to fight. It was questioning whether or not America should’ve sent people to Vietnam in the first place. Then you have Dobbins, who was this rough looking man, who was actually a really nice guy, that is also there to kill people but states, “All you can do is be nice. Treat them decent, you know?” to end the chapter. This is the strongest parallel to America; both appear strong, and courageous, but in the end America sent out its army to fight an economic and social ideology that they were afraid of.

At the end of Stockings, we can see that in Dobbins when he continues to wear his girlfriend’s stockings after she had broken up with him, “No sweat...the magic doesn’t go away.” The stockings were his comfort, his home away from home, the item he clung to and carried throughout his time as a soldier and blatantly showed to everyone around him. Despite his ruggedness, he was scared, just like the United States were, although he never seemed to admit it. He still clung onto hope, and he still fought despite his philosophy of being decent to people, because he had the moral and disillusionment and ignorance that America did.

In Style, the men observe a Vietnamese girl dancing after her home had been burned down and her family had been killed. Her hands were against her ears-possibly to block out the ringing sound of the war- as she danced among the wreckage. Later, Azar provocatively ridiculed her until Dobbins threatened to drop him in a well, “Henry Dobbins...took Azar from behind...over to a deep well and asked if we wanted to to be dumped in. Azar said no. ‘All right then,’ Henry Dobbins said, ‘dance right.’” We see this as the United States, as well, attempting to respect and know what other cultures and countries want, and trying to save them from “the bad guy”, even when sometimes, America is the bad guy.