Jarhead

Reading Jarhead by Anthony Sworrord, has so far been a quick read for me through the first half of the book. I've enjoyed reading this book I guess due to the vivid random careless thoughts of Swofford. Giving explicit detail in certain ranging instances between his childhood, having an ill sister go through rehab for overdose on drugs, trying to kill herself, and also explaining his own cases of suicide attempts. Swofford has no problem maintaining the same psychotic mind set in every dramatic situation, but at the same time expresses a side of a multiple personality disorder. You can see this when he holds his weapon in his mouth, talking about killing himself. Still calm and by himself he talks to himself and thinks about things such as, how the bullet will travel through his skull, and probably rick ache throughout his body, and would be interesting to know if the bullet would make it down to his foot. Yet, as soon as someone enters the barracks to see him in this fragile position, he acts as if it were just a joke, and plays it off saying "yea, I knew you were about to come in".

Another instance of his insanity, taking it to another level when he is left with a friend of his (Dettmann), after playing a little game to see who can assemble their weapon faster, Swofford takes it to a completely different level. After winning by a few seconds, he realizes this is his thirtieth time in a row beating him, and instantly puts the M16 against Dettmann's temple. This puts Dettmann in an extremely uncomfortable situation, not only the fact that their is a weapon against his head, but also because several days early Dettmann embarrassed Swofford as a leader of his men, and was punished for leaving Dettmann unattended for to long assuming he could simply stay awake. Shutting tight his tearing eyes, Dettmann tries to talk sense into Swofford, and says how he would not pull the trigger on a fellow marine. After several minutes Swofford pushes the magazine release button, still showing no emotion, and acts "casual", casual in his sense at least.