Born on the Fourth of July

Chapter 3 is the longest chapter in the book, and the first section contains some of the most straightforward writing in the book. Kovic presents a clear narrative of the events that caused him to enlist in the Marines in the order they happened, and he writes in the first person and in past tense. In doing so, he implies that the world of his childhood and the person he was are gone forever and exist only as memories, unlike the experiences of the war, which he often writes in present tense to indicate that the war continues for him. This choice suggests a strong break between the pre-Vietnam America and the post-Vietnam one.

Throughout the chapter, Kovic describes the shared cultural milestones of his generation: watching Elvis Presley on The Ed Sullivan Show, hearing that the Soviet Union had launched Sputnik into space, and finding out John F. Kennedy had been shot. These events convey to the reader that Kovic is a typical American, what he calls “your yankee doodle dandy, your john wayne come home, your fourth of july firecracker” in the book’s second epigraph. More than that, these events are ones that all Americans of Kovic’s generation shared; in including them, Kovic makes it clear that his experience was exactly like that of an average American before he went to war and that his story is not just his story, but the story of every American.

Much of the chapter explains the manifold reasons Kovic enlisted. Beyond the sense of patriotism that he felt his entire life as a person born on the nation’s birthday, he spent his childhood and teen years watching movies that celebrated the glory of war and caused him to idolize the idealized images conveyed by John Wayne and Audie Murphy. He was further swayed by wanting to escape the world he knew. He writes that he “wanted to be somebody” and makes frequent references to wanting to be a hero on the athletic field or battlefields (88). Kovic was thus not purely manipulated by war movies, the enlistment pamphlets he sees, and patriotism; he also wanted to enlist for his own ego. He wanted others to admire him and celebrate him, a point he makes in part to suggest that he is as much to blame for what happened to him as any propaganda is.

The second section of the chapter is in third person. As with parts of other chapters in third person, this section is about experiences in which Kovic was acting like the stereotypical Marine. All military recruits go through the humiliating ordeal of basic training, and Kovic is no different. In fact, he becomes even more excited to be a Marine as a result. Kovic spends a great deal of the chapter discussing the act of undressing and redressing in basic training. Throughout the book, he notes the impressive dress uniforms and shiny shoes of the Marines he sees (such as the general who gives him the Purple Heart and the men who speak at his school in Chapter 3), but in basic training, the act of dressing is degrading, with each recruit being forced to run naked in front of the others and receiving ill-fitting uniforms. The dressing up seems symbolic for Kovic, as though he becomes a different person when he puts on the uniform—but since the uniform is not the nice one he envisions, he implies a break between reality and the images he admired before enlisting.

The end of the chapter uses a more chaotic style than Kovic uses in other parts of the book. The reader is immersed in the sights and sounds of training, and Kovic makes no attempts to use proper grammar, writing instead in a stream-of-consciousness style that mixes italicized sections (representing his actions and thoughts), all-capital-letter sections (representing what the drill sergeants shout at him), and broken up lyrics from songs and speeches. For example, Kovic writes: “this is my rifle this is my gun this is for fighting this is for fun, Ask not what your country (the formation now) remember i can talk no i can’t talk no i can’t bring back by the river—with the rifle—America” (104-05). This writing style highlights the psychic trauma of combat even before Kovic has experienced it, and it further emphasizes the break between Kovic’s pre-enlistment life and the Kovic the reader meets in the first two chapters of the book. Because the reader already knows how his war career ends, there’s an irony to this section of the text. For instance, Kovic cites John F. Kennedy’s speech, but it is broken up, as though he cannot remember the impact it had on him besides its being a clever phrase that rattled in his brain. Kovic also notes other Marines remarking that the war will be over by Christmas Eve, which will not turn out to be true.