TTTC - Enemies

The chapter titled “Enemies” is perplexing to me as a reader.  When I first read the title of the chapter, I was expecting to read about a war battle or an encounter with enemy troops, not an inner platoon fistfight between Jensen and Strunk over a missing jacknife.  As I read this chapter, I begin to more fully understand the paranoia and mental battles these soldiers have with themselves as a result of the war. If Jensen and Strunk were on a team of some sort together back in the United States without experiencing war, I would like to think that there is no way that the two characters could get into a fistfight over a missing object.  With the stresses of war, however, every little argument or tiffy between fellow soldiers is largely escalated, causing a soldier to result to violence and physicality because that’s what they have been living and always doing in Vietnam.  The aftermath of the fight and mental state of Jensen is by far the most shocking part of this chapter and fight between the two men.  The visual and auditory imagery of Jensen shooting the sky with his gun while yelling “Strunk” really shows the reader his deep anger and twisted mentality as he is unable to separate his feelings of war with the way he treats and regards his colleagues.  “For two or three hours he simply sat there,” O’Brien writes as Jensen collapses after displaying his anger towards Strunk. This demonstrates the impaired mind of Jensen and the physical toll that the fight and the war at large have taken of Jensen as a person.  He has lost sight of himself being involved in the war.