40 pages • 1 hour read
Tobias WolffPharaoh’s Army: Memories of the Lost War
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1994A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Societal and Institutional Norms and Conventions
Wolff is struggling to find his place in American society at the start of the memoir, and this struggle in some ways forms the core of the book. Wolff was expelled from high school and, thus, does not complete his secondary education. This would itself be at odds with societal norms, but it is made even more so by the fact that Wolff was attending a prestigious Philadelphia prep school at the time. He then swings in the opposite direction, joining a ship crew. He is unable to make this work either, as he earns the ire of a crew member for reasons (ostensibly) unknown, and is thus forced to desert. Unsure of his place, he joins the military, a small irony given his own anti-authoritarian streaks.
In Pharaoh’s Army explores the way people work in or against these kinds of institutions, of which the American military is, arguably, the largest and most powerful. Here, Wolff struggles to find his place; however, he also perceives the military as a means of gaining respect through institutional power. Wolff’s struggle to fit in is contrasted explicitly with his own father’s struggles—a former aeronautical engineer, his charismatic father spent his life as a con man. Wolff feels his father’s demons in himself and joins the military to avoid the same fate; interestingly, his father frequently told people that he had served in the military, and he bragged of exploits that never occurred to curry favor and get out of jams.
Less overt, though, is how the novel addresses the ways that people counter institutional power. The Vietnam War was ostensibly about where power lies in society and is now largely considered to be a proxy war. As a result, it can be seen as a fight over institutional change; as Wolff bitterly remarks, the Viet Cong were fighting for a particular—and, in their eyes, utopian—future. The war itself is one version of institutional change, one which Wolff argues explicitly against in the memoir’s final chapter.
Imperialism and U.S. Aggression in Southeast Asia
Although Wolff’s memoir is explicitly concerned with his own time in Vietnam, it would be difficult not to mention the theme of imperialism and colonialism in the memoir, including in a wider view beyond Vietnam’s borders and into the current day. The controversial nature of the war hangs in the background of the book—Wolff encounters protestors in San Francisco, along with the irate Mr. Hoffman, and while in D.C., he frequently fights with friends and family who oppose the war. However, Wolff presents his own position as largely disinterested. He does not have the same sense of duty as Fisher, nor does he have the hawkish mentality of MacLeod; rather, he views himself largely as a victim of chance. He may look kindly upon military service, but about this particular war, he does not seems less willing to defend its necessity than justify his own involvement.
That said, Wolff spends a large portion of his time in and out of Vietnam attempting to figure out his place or purpose in the country, serving as a proxy for one kind of American relationship with the rest of the world. Wolff wishes to retain his American identity while living among the Vietnamese—he has no real desire to change his status as an outsider, only wanting to get through his time overseas and return home. This contrasts the Americans who attempt to live as Vietnamese—of whom Wolff is suspicious, if not dismissive—as well as men like MacLeod, who can only understand Vietnam through his own ideals, or Kale, who believes that the Vietnamese need to live as Americans. These approaches can be seen as metaphors for international relations—not just ways of individuals living abroad, but ways that nations approach other nations. In particular, Kale (and, to a lesser extent, MacLeod) suggests a form of American imperialism that has only expanded in the time since the Vietnam War, and many of the concerns expressed by Wolff, implicitly or explicitly, might find homes in memoirs about the more recent Iraq wars.
The Shifting Nature of Truth
The genre of memoir inherently questions the nature of truth, as stories are often recounted in terms that could be anything but. This is even truer of war memoirs, which inherently deal with the troublesome nature of perspective and its role in the recollection of tragedy and horror.
Wolff’s own work frequently recalls this problem of truth, both as it governed his time in Vietnam and as it colors his memory of the period. For example, of the Vietnamese officers, he writes that their behavior was in line with their superiors’ expectations rather than the other way around—e.g., they were expected to steal, so they stole (15). The American troops at Dong Tam similarly brag in their letters home about fierce, but fictional, battles to make their experiences more in line with what their wives and girlfriends believe them to be doing (15). As an officer, Wolff constantly has to reconcile the realities on the ground with the intelligence he receives, as the two frequently do not align.
Likewise, in his personal life, Wolff is forced to wrestle with this. Most obviously, his con-man father plays very loose with notions of truth, making up histories and stories to attempt to live the life he wants. Further, during their first post-prison dinner, when Wolff attempts to untangle some of those truths, his father grows irritable, as if the very idea of truth is offensive to him. Wolff also struggles with these different perspectives; he spends much of the memoir lost and must repeatedly reinforce his own version of events to himself. Following Tet, much of the narrative he has built for himself crumbles, and it could be argued that it is only when he is forced to confront essential truths about himself that he is able to grow into himself.
Related Titles
By Tobias Wolff
