Summary
Once he’d adjusted to a more stable life with Mamaw, Vance took up golf, taking Mamaw’s advice that it’s “where rich people do business.” And indeed, Vance was starting to plan for his future. He had ditched his marijuana-smoking friends for more motivated ones, scored well on his SAT, and was planning for college. Even so, Vance wondered if he had enough “grit” to study hard, resist partying, and eat healthily, since he had hardly been able to do so in high school. Being a veteran herself, Vance’s cousin Rachael suggested the Marine Corps. This was in the immediate wake of 9/11, and Vance was attracted to the idea of “heading to the Middle East to kill terrorists,” but he wondered if a chubby slacker who depended on his Mamaw could endure the “screaming drill instructors, constant exercise, [and] the separation from [his] family.” Still, the Marines promised to teach Vance discipline and leadership. So, just as the Iraq War was dawning, Vance signed up for the Marines.
Mamaw hated the idea of Vance enlisting, and Vance’s greatest concern about doing so was that Mamaw might not be waiting for him when he got back from duty. “Something inside me knew that she wouldn’t survive my time in the Marines,” he writes. Despite the harsh, thirteen-week boot camp, where Vance would lose his hair and be allowed only one phone call, he was heartened by the numerous letters he received on a daily basis from Mamaw and the rest of the family. In her letters, Mamaw showed a more vulnerable, sentimental side than she did verbally, encouraging Vance to persevere and trust in his intelligence. “I had the meanest old hillbilly staunchly in my corner, even if she was hundreds of miles away.”
Vance was impressed by how diverse the Marines in his platoon were, finding not just low-income kids but rich and poor; black, white and Hispanic; atheists, Catholics, Jews, and Protestants. He also surprised himself. When Vance chose to get dessert during his first boot camp meal, the drill instructor asked him, “‘You really need that cake, don’t you, fat-ass?’” and smacked it from his plate. Vance cleaned up the cake and said nothing, shocking himself not just because of his hillbilly instincts to fight back, but also because he began to realize he had underestimated himself. His life in Middletown had taught Vance that his choices had no effect on his life, which psychologists call “learned helplessness.” But in the Marines, Vance was adopting “learned willfulness” by teaching himself that he could, in fact, resist the cake; he could, in fact, climb a rope.
Vance counts his graduation from boot camp as the proudest day of his life, and nearly the whole Vance clan was in attendance. On his ten-day leave after boot camp, Vance returned to Middletown a new man, and few recognized him, as he had shed forty pounds and cut his hair. He carried himself differently, and it was evident in the way people treated him. He even began to see the food he ate at home differently, realizing that his standby, a bologna sandwich on toast with crumbled potato chips, was unhealthy.
In the winter of 2005, Vance learned his Marines unit would be deployed to Iraq to fight in the war. Mamaw, who was looking frailer than ever, took the news silently and said she hoped the war would end before Vance had to leave. For the first time, Mamaw accepted Vance’s help with some of the bills, including the rising premiums for the health insurance she’d gotten through AK Steel. Besides his military income, Vance made money playing online poker, having grown skilled at the game by playing with Mamaw and Papaw. For the first time, Vance felt like he was protecting Mamaw, rather than the other way around. He also took the family on driving trips and bought Lindsay’s children nice Christmas presents, feeling for the first time what it felt like to provide for one's family. “I had to learn that for myself, and once I did, there was no going back,” he writes.
In April of 2005, Vance got a call from his sister saying that Mamaw’s lung had collapsed and that she was in a coma. Vance sped on the way there from North Carolina, and upon learning his reason for doing so, even a police officer gave him permission to go as fast as he wanted. Days later, Mamaw’s condition worsened, and the family decided to pull the plug. Mamaw fought for three hours without a ventilator, then passed away. Vance didn’t cry in the days that followed, to the surprise of family members, but he was trying to maintain an impression of emotional fortitude. As Mamaw’s family began to handle her estate, they found what a financial hit Mamaw had taken by caring for Vance’s mother during her addiction and many relapses. As a result, Mamaw had split Bev’s inheritance between Vance and Lindsay, to their mother’s chagrin.
Like Papaw, Mamaw requested a visitation in Middletown as well as a funeral and burial in Kentucky. As he drove with Lindsay and their mother to Kentucky, Bev ranted that Mamaw was her mother, not Vance and Lindsay’s, that they both loved Mamaw too much. Although Vance was angrier than ever before at these comments, Lindsay put them to rest by saying, “‘No, Mom. She was our mom, too.’” When Vance returned to North Carolina, he hit a wet patch of road and hydroplaned, nearly driving the car off a guardrail, when the car suddenly stopped. He imagined Mamaw in heaven, protecting him from harm. This marked the first time Vance let himself cry about Mamaw’s death.
Vance spent two more years in the Marines, mostly working as a public affairs marine, which consisted of writing stories about individual marines, escorting civilian press, and doing community outreach. He recalls the time a shy Iraqi boy approached him, and Vance handed him an eraser; the joy on the boy’s face was indescribable. Although he doesn’t “believe in epiphanies,” Vance marks this as a moment of transformation for him, as he realized how lucky he was and resolved to be more grateful, like the boy with the eraser. Vance credits the Marines with teaching him how to function as an adult, how to choose a good bank, balance his checkbook, eat healthily, and, most of all, have high expectations for himself.
When the media officer for Vance’s base was fired, his boss asked Vance to replace him, even though the position’s rank was a captain, eight pay grades higher than Vance. As media officer, Vance controlled the base’s image in the press and had to speak to press on TV. As he learned he was capable of doing this job—and doing it so well, in fact, that he earned a commendation medal—Vance began to realize how dangerous the myth that towns like Middletown fail to produce successful kids because of some inherent defect. “I’m not saying ability doesn’t matter,” he writes. “It certainly helps. But there’s something powerful about realizing that you’ve undersold yourself—that somehow your mind confused lack of effort for inability.” Thus, when people ask Vance what he’d most like to change about the white working class, he answers, “‘The feeling that our choices don’t matter.’”
Analysis
With each new chapter in Vance’s book, we watch him experience significant life events with more frequency, and this chapter is no exception. In fact, this chapter marks two life-changing events in Vance’s life: his joining the Marines and Mamaw’s death. Although these events are not inherently connected, Vance frames them as such, as he implies that he believes his departure from Mamaw’s loving home constitutes a loss on Mamaw’s part; without Papaw or Vance to take care of, Mamaw’s health declines and eventually causes her death. To be sure, the tone in which Vance writes about his decision to join the Marines is both hopeful and guilt-ridden: “Something inside me knew that [Mamaw] wouldn’t survive my time in the Marines.” In this way, Vance foreshadows Mamaw’s eventual passing before it occurs.
Even after her passing, however, Vance invokes Mamaw’s spirit through an anecdote. While driving back to his Marines base after Mamaw’s funeral, Vance nearly veered off the road only for the car to suddenly stop. He believes this was Mamaw’s doing, a miracle from the afterlife. Regardless of whether this is true, this anecdote serves as a promise to the reader: that Mamaw, even while not physically present, will continue to be a presence in Vance’s life, and therefore the entire book. This is true both on a personal level for Vance and on a formal level for his writing, as Vance will continue to invoke memories and stories of Mamaw as the book goes on.
This chapter also marks the start of Vance’s transformation into a responsible adult, thereby breaking the cycle of poor financial, nutritional, and personal decisions so deeply embedded in his family’s story. Joining the Marines, he says, familiarized Vance with healthy eating habits, responsible financial decisions, and perhaps most importantly, his own latent potential. This is a major pivot point for Vance’s character, as we begin to see him as the family man who has narrated his story throughout the book, his character catching up to his voice. One gets the sense that the Vance we will see for the rest of the book will be a different, more adult Vance.
In that vein, Vance’s stories of his time in the Marines contain a powerful symbol of his transformation. He recalls visiting a village while on tour in Iraq, where he handed an eraser to a poor Iraqi boy who was so grateful for the gift. Vance remembers this even years later, as it showed him that being grateful, even in the face of extreme poverty and devastation, is the ultimate tool for success. By learning from this boy’s example, Vance decides to let go of some of the emotional baggage from his childhood, a struggle that the book will document for chapters to come. In this anecdote, the eraser serves as a symbol of the gift of opportunity, no matter how small the package in which it comes.
It is this sense of gratitude and optimism that defines this chapter as a pivot point towards Vance’s transformation from a fighting hillbilly to a responsible role model. As Vance learns he can be successful when he aims high, he is able to assess from a more objective angle the latent pessimism that plagues his home. People in places like Middletown tend to pass on the idea that they are inherently unsuccessful or incapable, and for many years, Vance believed this too. However, his time in the Marines taught him otherwise and allowed him to realize he is capable of anything. Thus, Vance touches on a theme that will become increasingly salient as the book proceeds: the transformative powers of optimism and self-confidence. Of course, later in the book, Vance will realize that this optimism, no matter how well it serves him, actually sets him apart from those who remain in Middletown and causes him to feel like an alien in his own hometown.
