Jarhead : a Marine's chronicle of the Gulf War and other battles

by Anthony Swofford

2003

Status

Checked out

Publication

New York : Pocket Books 2005, c2003.

Description

A memoir of the Gulf War by a front-line infantry marine recounts his struggles with the conflict on the front lines, his battles with fear and suicide, his brushes with death, and his identity as a soldier and an American.

User reviews

LibraryThing member rgruberexcel
RGG: Memoir about a Marine's experience in the first Iraq war. Very graphic; adult language.
LibraryThing member lilygirl
I love - repeat LOVE - this book. And not in the overused, flighty sense of the word. What's not to love in a book with nonstop action with blood-boiling gunfights? But that is not Swofford's story. I have read many books that recount the exciting details of war but lack the pure human drama
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Swofford brings to the page. We go inside the mind of a soldier impatiently waiting for action, yet fearing and dreading when that moment will find him - and we wait with him, knowing he will tell us the truth about The Moment when he lines up his first mark, pulls the trigger, and realizes that he has taken another man's life. It never comes. When I turned the last page and saw the sun rising through my bedroom window, I wondered why I had been so enthralled and unable to put the book down. Somehow I still am not sure why I love Jarhead, but I think it is Swofford's brutal honesty that pours out of the page and forces us to confront the human side of war and look beyond the statistics.
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LibraryThing member ilovebooksdlk
I don't gravitate to books about war, in fact I admit to having no interest at all in the subject. But I read this book on the recommendation of a writing teacher who suggested I look at the book's structure, taking away lessons from Tony Swofford's brilliant memoir of his experience as a marine in
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the Gulf War.

Structurally, Swofford moves us efforlessly through time - backstory and future story woven through with ease. The forward story takes us through his training exercises as well as his experiences in his unit, as they sit for months in the sand, waiting for the war to start. We get an inside look at the war machine, including some of the absurdities in how we train our young soldiers to fight. He builds credible characters whom we grow to care about, and we get inside his head as he tries to make sense of the endless waiting, the preparation for the war that never really starts.

His writing is so strong, my first impulse was to say, "Ghostwritten" - no way a grunt wrote this book! Turns out though that Swofford has an Iowa MFA, he's no common grunt at all (my first clue should've been that he reads Homer while sitting in a foxhole.) The brilliance of the writing here is that he makes you think you're reading the thoughts/words of a common grunt - a testament to his understanding of building a persona.

If you're an aspiring memoirist, this one can be very instructive. But probably worth a read even if you're not.
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LibraryThing member jddunn
A war memoir that is harsh, at times brutal, but also very thoughtful as well. I can understand how Abu Gharib happened, reading this, but I can also see why there is such shame in the military in the aftermath of it. A portrait of the double life men trained to kill but expected to sometimes be
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humane and eventually to rejoin society, struggle to lead. Hard to pigeonhole, and provides no easy answers, which is probably appropriate for such a book.
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LibraryThing member daizylee
Swofford certainly has his own ideas on war. But more interesting is his study of the Marine psyche and how it's possible to be constantly ready to battle while you're bored stiff.
LibraryThing member JBreedlove
An account of one marine's life and experiences in the first Gulf War. An eye-opening story of our "elite" armed forces.
LibraryThing member meegeekai
Read this before going to see the movie and was actually disappointed in the movie. But then, how could you make a movie out of the surreal enviroment that Swafford paints of the Gulf War? Great book!!
LibraryThing member ewalrath
This book is even better when read along with Live from Baghdad, it's the same war, but one book is written from the outside and the other inside.
This book is also helpful if you know young men in the military- not necessarily close family members, but acquaintances.
LibraryThing member grheault
Good writing, but very macho, guy guy guy, and a bit like watching the slam bang of a loud hollywood war movie, thus for me not that interesting. Did not finish, but maybe didn't give it enough of a chance.
LibraryThing member lynnm
Swofford has an engaging style, really gives a feel for what being a Marine during the First Gulf War was like. I had seen the movie first, so I was a bit surprised at how dark and - dare I say - depressing the book was in comparison. Not that I would expect the experience of going to war to be
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amusing in any way, but the movie came at the story from a slightly more light-hearted and absurd angle. No punches pulled, the book offers more in the way of commentary and less anecdotes than I had anticipated. Even so, a very good read.
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LibraryThing member shannonkearns
a wonderfully written book. poetic and disturbing. heartrending and beautiful. i really enjoyed it.
LibraryThing member Austin12
The novel, Jarhead, encompasses the military life where Anthony Swofford explains how his life was like through the Gulf War. In the beggining Anthony Swofford the protaginist is commisioned in Afghanistan and he recounts his experiences in the Marine culture, the blood lust, the alternating
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boredom and terror, and the absurd moments including wearing camouflage uniforms because their desert ones hadn't arrived yet, the protaginist struggles with all the B.S that he portrays through the military life. Throughout the middle of the book he perserves the military life and almost killing a man. (178/272)
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LibraryThing member StoutHearted
Written in raw, graphic language, Swofford seems to hold nothing back from readers on what it's like to be a Marine fighting in the Gulf War. He embraces the romantic brotherhood of the soldier while at the same time exposing its seedy side. Marines are broken down and rebuilt, as Swofford
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describes it, into ruthless killing machines. But, much to the disappointment of Swofford's unit, there is little killing in their war. Ultimately, Swofford and his fellow Marines must wrestle with what it means to be a soldier and Marine, and what their place is back home among their families, jobs, and society.

During their time served, they deal with life using any available distraction: primarily prostitutes, booze, and letters from home. From Swofford's descriptions, the vices go right along with the glory in the psyche of the soldier. It's a shocking revelation for civilians, but one can't help but excuse them when Swofford describes the aftermath of war. While crudeness and profanity make the first half of the novel tough, the same language becomes tragically beautiful in his description of the Iraqi bunkers and what he found there. The repetition of phrases and the metaphors make for amazing reading. You really feel the author's soul in these lines, right down to the core of his Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. You can really tell that these scenes haunt him at night. Swofford's experience as a soldier helps him to create language that both repulses and moves the reader. It's a good perspective on what life is like for those who fight, how they prepare their minds and bodies for war, as well as an unvarnished look at the military who looks upon these people as fodder.
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LibraryThing member DinadansFriend
Anthony Swofford has blown the whistle on the crudities and spiritual failure of Life in the Marine Corps, and its particular failures in the First Gulf War. Intellectually and Spiritually there's not much new here, but this file does have to be upgraded after any new war.
LibraryThing member jonfaith
Memoirs of this sort only encourage incredulity. My memory of reading this has obviusly bem deformed by subsequent history. Swofford aims for Dave Eggers territory, especially the settling of accounts with Dads Behaving Badly but I found whole enterprise indifferent.
LibraryThing member Chris.Wolak
This book really captured me when I first read it in 2003. Swofford's voice was new and seemed painfully honest. I've often thought about re-reading it.
LibraryThing member nicky_too
It's not a big book, but it's not an easy read either. The style is nice, the chapters short, but the atmosphere of this book is very, very disturbing. I'd seen the film and I'm happy I decided I had to read the book too.

This book describes how a jarhead actually feels and thinks. Anthony Swofford
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was a sniper in Operation Desert Shield (later Desert Storm) and he tells about his training and his time in the desert. All I'm left with afterwards is sadness....good book.
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LibraryThing member akbibliophile
Damn. This is one hardhitting book, and a very good one at that. Swofford lays out his Marine experiences for all to see, good and bad, and does so without making any comentary on the political veracities behind warfighting. His message to the reader: whatever the reason for going to war, never
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forget the cost to those who wage it and upon whom war is waged.
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LibraryThing member varielle
As I child I would eavesdrop on the men in my family talk about their war experiences which would never be brought up in front of the women or children. I didn’t understand but I knew it was scary and horrible and to never ask questions from my father (Korea), grandfather (WWI), and uncles
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(WWII). Over my working career I hired many veterans, some simple grunts, others Special Forces, Rangers, SEALS, etc. Most were great, dependable, hard working guys, all of whom were hiding damage. Anthony Swofford’s memoir Jarhead is a brutal tale of his life and career as a Marine through the First Gulf War. Thankfully he used his writing talent to transition into successful civilian life, not without internal wounds that never heal. Not all those who serve are that lucky. Jarhead is an excellent read but not for the faint-hearted.
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Language

Original publication date

2003

Physical description

367 p.; 18 cm

ISBN

9781416513407

Barcode

1600453
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