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| Original Title: | Jarhead: A Marine's Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles |
| ISBN: | 0743287215 (ISBN13: 9780743287210) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Literary Awards: | PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the Art of the Memoir (2004) |
Mention Epithetical Books Jarhead : A Marine's Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles
| Title | : | Jarhead : A Marine's Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles |
| Author | : | Anthony Swofford |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Special Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 260 pages |
| Published | : | November 11th 2005 by Scribner (first published February 2003) |
| Categories | : | Nonfiction. War. Military Fiction. Autobiography. Memoir. History. Biography |
Chronicle In Pursuance Of Books Jarhead : A Marine's Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles
Anthony Swofford's Jarhead is the first Gulf War memoir by a frontline infantry marine, and it is a searing, unforgettable narrative.When the marines -- or "jarheads," as they call themselves -- were sent in 1990 to Saudi Arabia to fight the Iraqis, Swofford was there, with a hundred-pound pack on his shoulders and a sniper's rifle in his hands. It was one misery upon another. He lived in sand for six months, his girlfriend back home betrayed him for a scrawny hotel clerk, he was punished by boredom and fear, he considered suicide, he pulled a gun on one of his fellow marines, and he was shot at by both Iraqis and Americans. At the end of the war, Swofford hiked for miles through a landscape of incinerated Iraqi soldiers and later was nearly killed in a booby-trapped Iraqi bunker.
Swofford weaves this experience of war with vivid accounts of boot camp (which included physical abuse by his drill instructor), reflections on the mythos of the marines, and remembrances of battles with lovers and family. As engagement with the Iraqis draws closer, he is forced to consider what it is to be an American, a soldier, a son of a soldier, and a man.
Unlike the real-time print and television coverage of the Gulf War, which was highly scripted by the Pentagon, Swofford's account subverts the conventional wisdom that U.S. military interventions are now merely surgical insertions of superior forces that result in few American casualties. Jarhead insists we remember the Americans who are in fact wounded or killed, the fields of smoking enemy corpses left behind, and the continuing difficulty that American soldiers have reentering civilian life.
A harrowing yet inspiring portrait of a tormented consciousness struggling for inner peace, Jarhead will elbow for room on that short shelf of American war classics that includes Philip Caputo's A Rumor of War and Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, and be admired not only for the raw beauty of its prose but also for the depth of its pained heart.
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Ratings: 3.66 From 8733 Users | 601 ReviewsWrite-Up Epithetical Books Jarhead : A Marine's Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles
This is by no means an explicitly anti-war novel. Its more an honest account and because the honest truth is that war is vicious and atrocious, an anti-war message cannot be hidden except through lies.Anthony Swofford was a U.S. sniper during the first Gulf War and Jarhead tells his story of life in the Marines and fighting in this war. His whole experience in coloured by power-hungry and vicious officers, rowdy nights out with fellow Marines and of course, the in your face brutality of killingAnthony Swofford's memoir of being a Marine grunt/sniper in the Gulf War is a tedious read. The depiction of the Gulf War feels correct: an over-hyped, oil-driven war that turned out to be completely anti-climactic. Swofford and his fellow marines (did I almost write "machines"?) felt cheated, in the end, because instead of the death, danger, and glory they were promised, the Gulf War didn't end up being an infantry war at all it was an air-and-armor turkey-shoot, and ended in far less time
'Jumpin' Jack Flash, it's a gas, gas, gas...' - The Rolling Stones'GAS! GAS! GAS!' - Soldier's warning cryEx-US Marine and author Anthony Swofford says in this book that he hated it when the 'flyboys' would play rock 'n' roll songs at full blast to intimidate the enemy and bolster their own morale. This music, he says, is a relic of another era and another war and has no place in 'his' war. Fuck the Doors, he says, this already is the other side.I can understand this feeling. The gung ho
This book and the movie it inspired will always be at the top of my list. This is the most realistic look at war from the viewpoint of any service member. You join the military thinking I'm gonna go kick doors in, blow stuff up, and end human lives when in all actuality most service members never see combat of any type. Mind you in this book and in the movie the author and his unit get mortared and shot at a couple of times but nothing major. The biggest thing that I love to point out about this
Having seen the film years ago, I'd always wanted to read the book. Would it bring a different perspective? Would it add to what I saw and understood from the film?Yes. Yes it would. Yes it did. I've always been one of those girls who's pretty vocal about not understanding why men choose to join the military; who tries to argue that surely there's a better way out of whatever it is you're escaping than fighting other men? I never understood what was going through a man's head to want to kill.But
If you go into this book expecting fire fights, skirmishes, battles and sorties, then you are coming at this book from the wrong direction, or you have the wrong book. Jarhead is what the title says it is. A book about a Jarhead. A young man in the service of the United States Marine Corp. Don't go into the book expecting anything but that. It concerns a Marine's journey towards becoming a Marine and a Sniper and who then joins the boots on the ground in the Middle east for the Gulf War
I first heard of this book when I listened to Anthony Swofford guesting on Libby Purves' BBC Radio 4 programme Midweek. He sounded like a really thoughtful, decent person and I bought his book some time later. It sat on my to read shelf until a week or so ago when I was heading out to Paris for a visit to the Marne Battlefields (World War One). I've read a lot of WW1 memoirs, and it struck me this would be a good book to take out there - that we all owe it to modern soldiers to learn something
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