A Boy at War

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2001

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-6

Chapters 7-12

Chapters 13-18

Chapters 19-24

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Themes

Relationships Between Fathers and Sons

Adam’s relationship with his father has shaped the course of his life and the way he views himself and the world around him. Adam has a great deal of admiration for his father; his father enlisted in the navy when he was Adam’s age and has since risen to the rank of officer. Adam feels the pressure of his father’s expectations and wonders if he will ever be able to live up to them or perhaps even surpass what his father has achieved. Adam swells with pride when he goes to the movies with his parents. They are surrounded by sailors in their dress whites who salute his father as they walk past, and Adam feels sentimental surges of emotion when he is in his father’s company and swept up in the pageantry and commitment to the navy that Adam sees all around him.

Adam’s identity has been molded by his proximity to his father and his role as an extension of him. After being preoccupied throughout much of their evening at the movies by the concern that his father is angry with him, Adam manages to relax and enjoy himself only after he receives a conspiratorial wink from his father, indicating that his father is not upset and there is no more tension between them. Adam has been conditioned to believe that his father’s reactions to him are Adam’s responsibility. If Adam arrives home late, for example, it does not matter that it was because he was so excited to see his father that he pedaled down to the harbor to await his arrival. Instead, Adam knows only that if he is not home in time, the entire tone of his father’s visit will be colored by the fact that he was not present to give his father the welcome he expects.

Despite his pride in his father and his respect for him, Adam feels the weight of the obligations associated with being Emory Pelko’s son. Adam’s father insists that the commitment he made to the navy should extend to his family as well, and that Adam, his mother, and Bea owe the navy a debt for all that it has given them. The way Adam grooms, dresses, and presents himself in his physical mannerisms; the company that he keeps; and the decisions that he makes are all under the umbrella of responsibility to his father and the navy. Adam has never rebelled against his father or rejected the demands his father has placed on him. He is hypervigilant, constantly aware of actions that could cause upheaval at home. Adam’s father does not truly appreciate the effort that Adam makes to meet his expectations. Adam is praised, but typically only after his father has given him correction. The frustration that occasionally surfaces in Adam is evidence of Adam’s growing independence and budding desire to define himself as a separate person with his own identity.

The Impact of Patriotism on Interpersonal Relationships

The patriotism that Adam exhibits is ingrained in him as a consequence of his lifelong status as a navy brat, but in midcentury America, patriotism like Adam’s was the rule rather than the exception for civilians and enlisted personnel alike. Adam’s sense of duty and loyalty to his country may be magnified by his upbringing, but his allegiance is aligned with the overarching social tendencies of the time. Adam admits that he feels overly sentimental when he salutes his father’s ship or demonstrates staunch patriotism on his first day in class, but he cannot help being swept up in the love that he has for his country and his father’s branch of service.

Mazer does not discuss any previous interactions or relationships between Adam and people of color up until this point in his life, but regardless of his prior experiences, Adam is made aware of ethnic and racial differences around him when he arrives on Oahu. Hawaii comprises a diverse comingling of people of different ethnicities and national origins, including those who are Native Hawaiian. Adam is called Haole, a term usually used to refer to white people, and an acknowledgment that he is something other than Hawaiian. Adam, especially as he gets to know Davi, finds his curiosity satisfied when he realizes that though Davi’s parents were born in Japan, Davi very much identifies with his status as an American, which allows Adam to ignore his father’s prejudicial assertions. Emory assumes that Davi has an allegiance to Japan by sheer default as someone of Japanese descent, even though Emory doesn’t know Davi or anything that Davi believes. Adam understands the effects of such prejudice after the attack on the harbor when Davi’s father is taken away and his neighbors spit and hurl racist slurs.

Adam comes to admire and respect Davi, but in his moment of panic with Japanese planes dropping bombs on the harbor, his baser instincts are awakened, and Adam too lashes out with violence and racist language. Adam is deeply ashamed that he allows himself to revert to the prejudices of his father and attack someone he cares about.

Though less outwardly aggressive, Emory’s insistence that Adam pay Davi’s father for fixing his bicycle is an attempt to relegate Mr. Mori to the status of a servant, like Koniko and Hideko. Adam’s younger sister, Bea, enjoys a close, affectionate relationship with Koniko and doesn’t make the connection between Koniko’s Japanese identity, the attacks at Pearl Harbor, and the fact that her nanny doesn’t appear for two weeks. Bea represents the innocence of a child who has yet to learn the bias and hatred that so many adults accrue over the course of their lives. There is a purity about her affection that leaves her untainted, and that kindness is echoed in her mother. Adam’s mother welcomes Koniko back with warmth. If she shares Emory’s belief that having employees of Japanese descent is different than having personal friends of Japanese descent, her kindness suggests that she doesn’t make the rigid delineation that her husband does.

Trauma and Transformation in Young People

There is a stark difference between the playful roughhousing between Davi and Adam at the beginning of the novel and the adult situations and consequences they face as the result of the violence that engulfs Pearl Harbor. Along with Martin, Adam and Davi become the helpless victims of adult conflicts. Adam, who has in his bedroom miniature models of the very planes that attack the harbor on December 7, never imagines that the real, life-size versions will fly overhead and drop bombs before his eyes. He never envisions a scenario in which they actually shoot at him and his friends or sink his father’s ship. Adam also never imagines lashing out against Davi in true rage and using language meant to hurt and debase him in the process, but his impulsive judgment that Davi is cheering on the Japanese planes sparks a level of aggression that bears real consequences. Though the three boys are only 14, they are plunged into a life-and-death situation—especially Adam, who is unable to hold onto the Red Cross volunteer’s car and get to the hospital. Adam is enveloped in the duty-bound expectations of a sailor’s role and, lacking any training whatsoever, flounders as he attempts to avoid being punished for the simple misunderstanding that finds him in uniform.

When he is given a weapon, he gains the power to exact mature, adult consequences with his actions. Adam doesn’t hit the plane he fires upon, but he is willing to do so—willing to kill. This is in direct opposition to the playful, rowdy, mock violence Adam has engaged in with Davi over the past few weeks of their friendship. Once only playing at violence, they both cross the threshold when Adam retaliates against the gunner and when Davi is struck with the pistol because he is presumed to be a Japanese combatant.

When he returns home and his father is, as he expects, not there, Adam feels that he should assume the responsibilities of the 1940s notion of the “man of the house.” This belief assumes that there should be a male family member acting as leader, regardless of the age or role of the others in the household. He cares for his mother and sister, attempting to ensure their physical safety as well as their emotional well-being. Later, he considers parting from them if it means staying near his father’s resting place. Never in his life has Adam considered living apart from his family unit, unless it has been in thinking about one day joining the navy, but he is prepared at 14 years old to allow his mother and sister to leave so that he can stay in proximity to where his father’s remains have been consigned to the ocean.

Adam and his mother have a conversation at the end of the novel that stops short of exploring an important question. Adam’s father is declared “Missing in Action,” and as a naval family and extension of Emory, Marilyn, Adam, and Bea are to be transferred to the mainland. Adam, however, more convinced of the reality of his father’s fate, knows that the “Missing in Action” designation is likely only temporary, until the navy can establish with certainty a final accounting of the casualties. If his father is dead, Adam reasons, there is no obligation on their part to follow the order because they are no longer attached to the navy by Emory.