army

In Pharaoh's Army by Tobias Wolff is a war memoir that shares Wolff's experiences as a US Army officer in the Vietnam War. Similar to E.B Sledge in Good Bye To All That, who was a U.S Marine that fought in Japan during world war two, these memoir's gives the pain suffered during this difficult period of time in their lives. E.B sledge went through numerous obstacles to enlisted in the Marine Corps, similar to Wolff In Pharaoh's Army joining the military to be involved in something major that will make them feel like they are somebody and by challenging their manhood.

After flunking out of school, eighteen-year-old Wolff, was searching for meaning in his life similar to Sledge where he flunked out at Marion Military Institute on purpose of fear that the war would end before he got a chance to enter and was looking for something that was missing in their life that school couldn't provide a quest for adventure Tobias was a naïve soldier at first very cheerful this caused resentment towards him from rookie and veteran soldiers Wolff recalls a ship mechanic hating him "why did he hate me? He may have felt-I might have made him feel-that I was a tourist here, that my life would not be defined, as his had been, by years of hard labor"(Wolff pg.39)this quote showed the confusion he had with why his fellow soldiers hated him and his conclusion on why the soldiers hated him.

Already feeling like a loser for dropping out of school he didn't want to fail at being a soldier after a few mess up by almost killing himself by falling asleep almost getting mutilated and killed by a propeller if he wouldn't have woken up earlier this few mistakes almost cost him his life, making him take the military more serious. After these events that made hi...

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...rmy he couldn’t help but think about those who died young he questioned why them and not him what was his purpose in life if he was the one that survived out of all of his friends he need to find his meaning sooner than later.

Post-war took a different effect on Sledge and Wolff, Sledge attended Alabama Polytechnic Institute and received a Bachelor of Science degree and later getting his doctrine at University of Florida. This comes back to their childhood where Sledge had an educated and religious family carrying a pocket-sized Bible he carried with him during battles, while Wolff didn’t quite have a positive father figure and was not very religious Wolff is Catholic but not as religious a Sledge was this played a big part in them finding their self. with Wolff realizing his environment had a negative effect on him he fled to England and manages to get into Oxford.