"I remember feeling relief in basic while everyone else was frantic with fear. It had dawned on me that I'd never have to make a decision again. That seemed freeing, but it gnawed at some part of me even then. Eventually, I had to learn that freedom is not the same thing as the absence of accountability."
The narrator recalls the naivety of his thoughts before going to war. The knowledge of not having to be responsible for anything seemed relieving. It is something that a young person, with not much experience, not knowing what he's getting into, would think.
"It’s lovely to think that snow can be special. We’re always told it is. Of all those million million flakes that fall, no two are alike, forever and ever, amen. I’ve spent some time looking out the window of my cabin watching snowflakes fall like a shot dove’s feathers fluttering slowly down to the ground. They all look the same to me."
This shows the pessimism of a soldier that has been in the war, has seen the horrors of it. Too many young soldiers die, people are nothing but a number, and when they die they are all the same, no one is much more different than the other in death-just like snowflakes falling to the ground.
"And that’s when it began, on that short ride in to Kaiserslautern. We rode in silence, without pleasantries, and the radio stayed off. I leaned my head against the window and watched as my breath condensed on it. I took my finger and made rudimentary lines in the fogged-over glass; first one, then another, until I had made the shape of a square, a smaller window inside the window. As I looked out onto the trees that edged the road, my muscles tensed and I began to sweat. I knew where I was: a road in Germany, AWOL, waiting for the flight back to the States. But my body did not: a road, the edge of it, and another day. My fingers closed around a rifle that was not there. I told them the rifle was not supposed to be there, but my fingers would not listen, and they kept closing around the space where my rifle was supposed to be and I continued to sweat and my heart was beating much faster than I thought reasonable."
After becoming AWOL, Bartle has his first panic attack. The novel is about describing the struggles of a soldier during and after the war and in this the struggle of adjusting after the war is vividly presented.
"Maybe if things had happened a little differently in Al Tafar it could have been like that. But things happened the way they happened without regard to our desire for them to have happened another way. Despite an age-old instinct to provide an explanation more complex than that, something with a level of profundity and depth which would seem commensurate with the confusion I felt, it really was that simple."
Bartle gives a realistic view to what happened to Murph in Iraq-that things happen the way they do randomly, there is no special reason, no specific workings of fate to be able to justify what happened.
"I thought of my grandfather’s war. How they had destinations and purpose. How the next day we’d march out under a sun hanging low over the plains in the east. We’d go back into a city that had fought this battle yearly; a slow, bloody parade in fall to mark the change of season. We’d drive them out. We always had. We’d kill them. They’d shoot us and blow off our limbs and run into the hills and wadis, back into the alleys and dusty villages. Then they’d come back, and we’d start over by waving to them as they leaned against lampposts and unfurled green awnings while drinking tea in front of their shops. While we patrolled the streets, we’d throw candy to their children with whom we’d fight in the fall a few more years from now."
Bartle realizes the pointlessness of war while walking into the city Al Tafar and seeing all the decay. How their only purpose is to kill each other while not so long ago they walked among each other. It is a ridiculous and hypocritical cycle of cruelty.
"I wanted to go to sleep and stay there, that’s all. A passive wish, one I didn’t push. Sure, there is a fine line between not wanting to wake up and actually wanting to kill yourself, and while I discovered you can walk that line for a long while without even noticing, anybody who is around you surely will, and then of course all kinds of unanswerable questions will not be far behind."
If there is a fine line then that means that there is not much difference, if the line is fine then that line could easily be broken and from this it can clearly be seen that Bartle was close to suicide even though he seems to deny it. Sure you can walk the line for a long while but you are bound to fall from it at some point.
"The ground was stained rust brown where the man died. The last tremors of his legs and arms left a strange impression in the earth. I got down on one knee for a closer look, but turned away, fighting convulsions of dry heaves and bile. The image burned into my mind like a landscape altered by erosive weather. Even as I walked away, I saw it, a perfect bloody angel made of dust."
It is a bizarre vivid image that connects the horrid death with something innocent. This connection paints an even more colorful picture of the atrocities and horrors of war. Adding this kind of innocence creates an even more disturbing effect of the image that is already highly disturbing.
