Boy in the Field

When I first read “In the Field” I got two impressions from the boy soldier. I at first felt like the character was O’Brien himself, but reading it again I felt like O’Brien was using the boy “In the Field” as a representative figure in a larger meaning. This part of his interview showed how O’Brien uses his stories in kind of a grand scheme, to say something larger than just the characters, setting, or events. Q: “Now that you are looking at the war in that way, how have you found this terrain of Vietnam a convenient metaphor?”A: “That’s mostly how I look at it- though I’m not sure I’d call it a convenient metaphor. I’d say an essential metaphor or a life-given metaphor that, for me, is inescapable.” O’Brien describes the boy as hooded by a poncho, totally caked with mud, with impossible to make out facial features. It very well could actually be O’Brien, but I don’t think it matters. The boy to me, was every soldier in the war, caked in mud, standing in a shit field, something I felt O’Brien used to show how needlessly disgusting and horrible war is. The boys search for his lost picture to me was O’Brien showing how soldiers struggle not to lose apart of themselves in the muck.