“Who said it?—probably Confucius—‘I can’t beat a sculpture from a stone with a sledgehammer; I can’t free the soul of man by violence.’ Peace was here, peace was now. Peace promised in any other time or place was a lie.”

Trung’s thoughts allude to the mindfulness that is a feature of religions like Confucianism and Buddhism, and these details reflect The Search for Faith and Meaning in an Arbitrary World. This mindfulness requires an action-oriented focus on the present moment, and Trung interprets this concept to mean that peace must be found by improving the present, rather than implementing grandiose and dangerous ideas of improving a hypothetical future through violence and upheaval.

“Skip’s main job, his basic task at this phase of his life, his purpose here in this big bedroom beside the tiny golf course, was to create a second catalog arranged by categories the colonel had devised, and then cross-reference the two. Sands had no secretary, no help—this was the colonel’s private intelligence library, his cache, his hidey-hole. He claimed to have accomplished all the photocopying by himself, claimed Skip was the only other person to have touched these mysteries.”

The ironic tone of this passage juxtaposes Skip’s dreams of thrilling espionage with the mundane reality of his enterprise. That a spy’s work involves “catalogs” and “photocopying” is a touch of sly humor, illustrating the bizarreness of life. The deliberate use of “mysteries” for an everyday, office-like job further deepens the comic absurdity of Skip’s situation.

“Sands felt in his uncle’s presence a shameful and girlish despair. How would he evolve into anyone as clear, as emphatic, as Colonel Francis Sands? Quite early on he’d recognized himself as weak and impressionable and had determined to find good heroes. John F. Kennedy had been one. Lincoln, Socrates, Marcus Aurelius…”

Skip’s veneration of the colonel is accompanied by the self-disgust that he will never be able to fill his shoes, illustrating the trap inherent in hero-worship. By placing the colonel on a pedestal, Skip ensures he himself will always be beneath his uncle. Skip’s efforts toward self-improvement highlight his boyish youthfulness, while the use of “girlish” coupled with “shameful” hints at the subtle misogyny informing Skip’s thought process. Emotions like shame and despair are immediately coded as feminine, implying that to be a man, Skip must move past this “girlish” side.

“I’m a patriot. I believe in liberty and justice for all. I’m not sophisticated enough to be ashamed of that. But that doesn’t mean I look at my country through some kind of rosy fog. I’m in Intelligence. I’m after the truth.”

The colonel conveys an important message to Skip in this passage, suggesting Skip chase the truth, rather than confirm a bias he already possesses. The colonel’s words foreshadow that Skip will have to revise his method of inquiry to grow into the man he strives to become, while also hinting at The Impossibility of Simple Ethical Choices During Armed Conflict.

“Sands vanquished a rush of fear and said emphatically, ‘I’m your man, sir.’

‘Get in there. Have intercourse with snakes. Eat human flesh. Learn everything.’

‘That’s pretty broad.’”

These lines are an example of Johnson’s use of humor in the novel, both serving as relief from his bleaker themes. When the colonel uses extreme (and possibly racist) examples to imply that Skip thoroughly immerse himself in Mindanao, Skip dryly undercuts the hyperbole by saying the colonel’s mandate is “pretty broad.” The notion that eating human flesh and having sex with snakes equates local custom is based on highly offensive racist stereotypes. However, the colonel may be using these examples in a self-aware fashion, mocking the portrayal of “exotic” people in pulp cinema and literature.

“St. Paul says there is one God, he confirms that, but he says, ‘There is one God, and many administrations.’ I understand that to mean you can wander out of one universe and into another just by pointing your feet and forward march. I mean you can come to a land where the fate of human beings is completely different from what you understood it to be. And this utterly different universe is administered through the earth itself. Up through the dirt, goddamn it.”

The colonel’s reference to different “administrations” props up several times in the novel, with Skip sharing it with Kathy, and Kathy being profoundly affected by the idea. What the colonel means by different administrations is the idea that all paths lead to God, reflecting the search for faith and meaning in an arbitrary world. Just because the Vietnamese path appears different from the Judeo-Christian path does not make it any less. St. Paul’s different administrations, however, allude to different ministries within Christianity.

“They came down the other side of the mountain onto a wide, level trail beaten smooth by carabao hooves. Gradually the way narrowed until Carignan had to draw his arms to his chest in order to keep from being savaged by thorns on either side. Saliling led the march, the tip of his spear scraping the leaves overhead and knocking last night’s rain into Carignan’s face.”

This passage highlights Johnson’s use of cinematic imagery and description to bring his novel’s world to life. Carignan’s action of drawing his arms against his chest to navigate the narrowing path is visual, while the cold rain suddenly shaken into Carignan’s face is tactile.

“Everybody’s got a mean side. Just don’t feed it till it grows.”

Women in the novel often act as forces of sanity and goodness, counterbalancing the nihilistic, crude world view of the men. When James tells Stevie that he wants to go to Vietnam so he can “fuck up” lots of people, Stevie warns him against feeding his innate violence, gesturing toward The Harmful Effects of Patriarchal Norms During War. Stevie’s words prove prophetic, since feeding his mean side is exactly what James will go on to do.

“‘Or maybe it’s not that simple—U.S. vs. North Vietnam—no, it’s the young men who get this war forced upon them versus the ones who choose this war, the dying soldiers vs. the theorists and the dogmatists and the generals.’

Here was clumsy thinking, and Sands had long ago lost patience with it. Would she like to see a bust of Lenin by the door of every public school? See the Statue of Liberty toppled in an obscene ceremony?”

Skip’s annoyance at Kathy’s letter is another example of male denigration of a wisdom seen as weak and female. When Kathy writes that the selfish ambition of old men forces young men into battle and untimely death, Skip bristles at the suggestion that the war is pointless. In Skip’s current binary thinking, by questioning war, Kathy is inviting communism into America, compromising American values. Skip’s fear of communism is also a satire of similar attitudes in the Cold War era US. As the narrative progresses, Skip will become more aware of the impossibility of simple ethical choices during armed conflict and will be less prone to such binary thinking.

“‘I don’t hold any hope, Kim. There’s an old saying: The anvil outlasts the hammer.’

‘Which one are we?’

‘We’re neither one. We get smashed between.’

‘And another: Every cock fights best on his own dunghill.’

‘Hah! Here’s one more old saying: A rooster is a chicken, but men are like a bunch of hens.’

‘I never heard this saying.’

She laughed with delight, heading toward the kitchen.”

The banter between Hao and Kim is at once wise and silly, illustrating their mutual love and comfort. Unlike many other pairs in the novel, Hao and Kim are able to communicate freely and easily, which is why they are neither isolated nor stuck. The saying about men being hens is made up on the spot.

“Psy Ops is all about unusual thinking, man. We want ideas blown up right to where they’re gonna pop. We’re on the cutting edge of reality itself. Right where it turns into a dream.”

An example of Jimmy’s characteristically high-blown, feverish manner of speaking, these words also highlight the ambiguity at the heart of psychological warfare. Johnson deliberately presents Psy Ops as an incomprehensible, nebulous concept to emphasize the troubling idea of exploiting a people’s beliefs and culture to manipulate them.

“His eye fell on a patron at the next table, an Asian man with an incomprehensibly large black growth descending from his scalp and covering the nape of his neck. Across from this man sat a woman with a monkey in her lap. She scowled, the monkey gave her no cheer, the menu made her unhappy.”

Skip’s description of his co-patrons at the Saigon club, where he awaits the colonel, exemplifies the novel’s use of the vivid, surreal image to highlight the world’s absurdity. A routine wait at a table is interrupted by the sight of a man with a mysterious black growth on his face and an unhappy woman cradling a monkey. The phrase “the monkey gave her no cheer” further enhances the oddness of the image.

“We in Purgatory sing fondly of Hell.”

Kathy’s sharp, pithy words are a response to Colin’s assumption that the watery mush at the Bo Dai kitchen was garbage, instead of the children’s meal. She uses Christian imagery to convey the idea that even garbage becomes food when in purgatory (or crisis).

“Tree of Smoke—(pillar of smoke, pillar of fire) the ‘guiding light’ of a sincere goal for the function of intelligence—restoring intelligence-gathering as the main function of intelligence operations, rather than to provide rationalizations for policy […] The final step is to create fictions and serve them to our policy-makers in order to control the direction of government. ALSO—‘Tree of Smoke’—note similarity to mushroom cloud. HAH!”

The draft of the colonel’s article contains ideas that are at once impossible and provocative. These lines show the real purpose behind the Tree of Smoke, which is not traditional Psy Ops, but a method to control the intelligence going out to policymakers. Tree of Smoke can also be seen as Psy Ops on the Americans, feeding them selective information so they don’t form bad policy. The incendiary, radical nature of the colonel’s ideas foreshadows his trouble with the CIA.

“As their tours stretched out they only grew more obsessed with their girls back home, and as their time grew short they counted the days and rhapsodized about getting white meat, white meat, white meat. But James only wanted more of what he got at the Purple Bar, whatever color of meat it was.”

Illustrating the theme of the harmful effects of patriarchal norms during war, these lines show how James and his fellow soldiers refer to women as “meat,” disembodying them and reducing them to sexual objects. While his fellows hanker for their own girlfriends, James does not care for intimacy or Stevie, wanting only “whatever color of meat” is available at the Purple Bar, implying he prefers transactional, exploitative sex.

“They’re only monkeys, it was all she could do to keep from shouting, monkeys, monkeys.”

Kathy’s inner scream emphasizes the depth of her anger and despair that the Binghams are going on about the loss of the monkeys when humans are perishing. The uncharacteristic ugliness of Kathy’s feelings shows that even empathy becomes a scarce resource in extreme times.

“‘I want this muhfucker to get a real…good…look at something,’ the Kooty said. ‘Oh, yeah. Sound like a baby girl,’ he said in answer to the man’s screams. He dropped his knife in the gore at his feet and grabbed the man’s eyeballs hanging by their purple optic nerves and turned the red veiny side so that the pupils looked back at the empty sockets and the pulp in the cranium. ‘Take a good look at yourself, you piece of shit.’”

Johnson deliberately describes the torture of the VC in extreme, graphic terms to emphasize the horror of the situation, as well as its lasting effects on perpetrators and witnesses alike. James may encourage the Kooty, but the sight will harden his psyche in a devastating fashion, paving the way for James’s own crimes against humanity and reflecting the harmful effects of patriarchal norms during war. For Skip, the scene of torture will prove to be one of several catalyzing incidents that shatter his illusion of American superiority.

“The Purple Bar was the same oversized hooch, a loitering place for dull-faced prostitutes, waifs whose families had perished. No local girls entered there.”

Minh’s antiromantic description of the Purple Bar is in stark contrast to its glorification by James. James thinks of the bar as a hedonistic paradise, but in Minh’s mind, it is a depressing barn. Significantly, the women frequenting the bar are described by Minh as “waifs” whose families have perished, thus emphasizing their desperation. The waifs are distinct from respectable local girls protected by the structures of society and family. While Minh’s characterization of the women as “waifs” is uncharitable, it also makes it clear that they are being exploited.

“They threw hand grenades through doorways and blew the arms and legs off ignorant farmers, they rescued puppies from starvation and smuggled them home to Mississippi in their shirts, they burned down whole villages and raped young girls, they stole medicines by the jeepload to save the lives of orphans.”

Kathy’s description of the Marines highlights their contradictory attitude toward the Vietnamese people and invokes the harmful effects of patriarchal norms during war. The rapists of young girls are also rescuers of puppies and orphans, indicating that the soldiers are torn between natural, human empathy and their social conditioning. Further, while the narrative highlights the violence and cruelty of the Marines, it also suggests that the cruelty is a function of whole institutions that promote violence and domination.

“I thought Marx would give us back our families and villages. That’s because I only thought of the end Marx talked about […] he says that at the end of the future the state is like a vine that will die and fall off. That’s what I expected […] And when it withers away, it leaves my family and my village. That’s what I saw at the end of the future: the French are gone, the Americans are gone, the Communists are gone, my village returns, my family returns. But they lied.”

Trung’s words illustrate the gap between philosophical ideals and real-world practice, highlighting the impossibility of simple ethical choices during armed conflict. Marxist philosophy, as developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, suggests that as a socialist society advances, it becomes so harmonious that the need for state supervision and interference disappears. However, in practice, many communist regimes involve an over-involvement of the state, leading to a curbing of individual freedoms.

“‘Family better count for something. Because nothing else does.’

‘You got that right.’

‘You ready for a burger?’

‘Does the Pope wear a dress?’”

The conversation between Bill and James is an example of bleak humor, since it emphasizes the importance of family even when the familial bond between the brothers has all but disappeared. The hankering for family as an article of faith is immediately followed by a search for a burger and a snarky joke, highlighting the shakiness of that hankering.

“Once upon a time there was a war.

There was once a war in Asia that had among its tragedies the fact that it followed World War II, a modern war that had somehow managed to retain or revive some of the glories and romances of earlier wars. This Asian war however failed to give any romances outside of hellish myths. Among the denizens to be twisted beyond recognition—even, or especially, beyond recognition by themselves, were a young Canadian widow and a young American man…”

Skip’s last letter to Kathy, which Skip plans for Kathy to receive after his death, is narrated as a ruined fairy tale or a doomed romance, beginning with the familiar opening of “once upon a time.” The fairy tale-like beginning is a satire on the myth of war as a romantic enterprise, since all the Vietnam War produced was “hellish myths.” The romance is further dismantled by the fact that the hero and heroine at its center do not end up together, but instead are “twisted beyond recognition.”

“I have one ship and they call me a pirate. You have a fleet and they call you an Emperor. I can’t remember who said it.”

In his last letter to Kathy, Skip makes the crucial—and ironic—point that the world defines a criminal by scale. The larger terrorists get called national armies, while the smaller terrorists are condemned, the biggest thieves are christened corporations, while the little thieves end up in jail. Thus, Skip will be hanged for an arms racket, while bigger armies will continue to invade smaller nations with impunity.