...It is okay now. It is all right. Yes it is all right. I have given my dead swinging dick for America. I have given my numb young dick for democracy...Oh God oh God I want it back! I gave it for the whole country, I gave it for every one of them. Yes. I gave my dead dick for John Wayne and Howdy Doody, for Castiglia and Sparky the barber. Nobody ever told me I was going to come back from the war without a penis. But I am back and my head is screaming and I don't know what to do." (125)
"They sat together watching the big crowd and listening to one speaker after the other, including the mayor and all the town's dignitaries; each one spoke very beautiful words about sacrifice and patriotism and God, crying out to the crowd to support the boys in the war so that their brave sacrifices would not be in vain." (118)
"These people had never been to to his war, and they had been talking like they knew everything, like they were experts on the whole goddamn thing, like he and Eddie didn't know how to speak for themselves because there was something wrong with both of them. They couldn't speak because if the war and had to have others define for them with their lovely words what they didn't know anything about." (120)
“I did not say anything. I was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious, and sacrifice and the expression in vain. We had heard them, sometimes standing in the rain almost out of earshot, so that only the shouted words came through, and had read them on proclamations that were slapped up by billposters over other proclamations, now for a long time, and I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stock yards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it.”
—Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (1929)
"'I'm fucked, I'm fucked up,' the boy was saying" (128).
KOVIC. You tell her, Dad. Tell her! It's a lie! It's a fucking lie! There's no God. God is as dead as my legs. There's no God, there's no country. It's just me and this fucking wheelchair for the rest of my life. For nothing, this dick, this penis. They say it's a sin if you play with your penis. I just wish I could—
PATRICIA KOVIC. Don't say penis in this house!
KOVIC. Penis! Big fucking erect penis, Mom! Penis! Penis! I never had to learn how to use it. It's gone, it's gone in some fucking jungle in Asia. I'm so sad, Mom. I'm so sad. (Born on The Fourth of July, screenplay by Oliver Stone and Ron Kovic)
Here is a clip from the Oliver Stone adaptation featuring Willem Dafoe, who starred in Platoon as did Tom Berenger who played the recruiter in the scene we watched today, and of course Tom Cruise. It takes a serious scene from the book and gives it a comic absurdity. And PLEASE WATCH this scene between Kovic and his mother, played by Caroline Kava. It's for me the most devastating moment in the film.
Lots to digest here, in the quotes above, the clips (which I want you to view), and the reading. So to jump in:
1. "They tricked him." That's what Naima Dobbs said on four years ago when we were talking about Chapter 3. By the point in the book we're at now, Kovic makes clear he feels as though he was tricked, bamboozled, fooled, not "told I was going to come back from the war without a penis." Do you think he was tricked? Why or why not?
2. Pick one of the clips above: your reaction to it? And: does it help illuminate what we've been reading? Is it what you pictured when you read?
3. This last reading: what in it especially jumped out to you? What stays with you from it. And why?
Go ahead and quote once in your response.
As always, feel free to respond to your classmates' responses. Below is Kovic talking about Bruce Springsteen, who has supported veterans causes since 1981. His song 1984 "Born in the USA" has to be a reference on some level to Kovic's book.
And here is "Born in the USA," which will be quoted directly in our next book, "In Country."
See you tomorrow.
I think that ‘tricked’ is the wrong word. Kovic was defininenty misled. He grew up thinking that the marines were the best and that he could be an action movie hero if he joined them, but he wasn’t shown the downsides of war. The recruitment posters don’t show the inside of the discussing, underfunded, VA hospitals. But the word ‘tricked’ implies a malicious scheme with the end goal of deceiving someone. What Kovic feel victim to was marketing. The marines weren’t going to show the sadness felt by the injured men, believing themselves to be incapable of receiving love, they wouldn’t get any people to sign up. Kovic definitely was misled, but there wasn’t malicious intent in getting him to join, no one was like “ha! Got ya” after he arrived at training.
ReplyDeleteThe scene with Charlie was shocking. In the book it is distressing to read him yelling “Fuck you! Fuck all of you goddamn motherfuckers! They made me kill babies! They made me kill babies!”, but watching someone scream those words brings it to another level. Seeing the pain in someone’s eyes, even if they are an actor, as they yell about how they had to kill babies is more powerful than can be depicted on a page.
How Kovic’s relationships with those around him change. When he is in his town, he is seen as something to be pitied. People come “to shake his hand and thank him for all he had done for God and his country” (121) as he goes around town, and he feels dehumanized. He feels like a trophy in a case, or a zoo animal. When he is in Mexico, he feels more human. He is around disabled people like him, and feels welcomed. But he soon gets restless and lonely, seeking comfort in prostitutes. Finally, when he returns home and has to go to the hospital, he is dehumanized again. Rather than feeling like something to be stared at from afar, like he did before leaving, he feels forgotten. He is mistreated by the aids, and when the pump that is keeping his leg clean and healthy breaks, it is explained to him that they don’t have another and the best thing that he can do is hope that it somehow fixes itself.
1. Yes, Kovic was tricked by omission. As a child, Kovic was indoctrinated in the romanticization of military service; everything from watching “heroic” war movies to playing army in the woods molded him into becoming a marine. Nobody ever told Kovic about the atrocities of war; nobody told him that he would come home a broken broken corpse; his childhood told him that the marines would make him a man, but instead the Marines made him a pitiful shell. The romanticization of war and the Marines gave Kovic an internal narrative that the Marines was where he should be, but that narrative never included anything other than the glory, order, and pride of service. Nobody ever told him about what war could do to him.
ReplyDelete2. I picked the clip of Kovic’ speech in the movie. I thought it was very powerful and ironic how Kovic tried to “put on a happy face” and tell the crowd what they wanted to hear: we will win the war, support the boys, the war didn’t take everything from me etc, but when trying to speak, he is too overwhelmed with a “flashback” to get the words out. I would argue that this clip shows one toll that Vietnam took on Kovic; even when he tries to defend the war, the horrific memories of Vietnam overtake him.
3. “What kind of a miserable life was this, no friends, no legs, people staring at him wherever he went.” Kovic’s inability to find any lasting happiness or satisfaction was very upsetting for me. From rationalizing the war, protesting the war, living with Helen, living alone, Kovic always ends up getting a shitty deal. Whatever he tries to do to make his life better always seems to backfire; he can’t lie and support the war, he is beaten and arrested when he protests the war, he is unhappy with Helen, and crushingly lonely on his own. The stress of Vietnam has broken his very ability to live, even if it didn’t kill him.
Yes, I believe Kovic was tricked. I think that to be honest with someone, you have to tell the whole truth, not a partial truth. Kovic was shown only a partial story. He was only shown how masculine he would be if he joined the marines. He was shown shiny shoes, crisp uniforms, and medals galore. He was told the marines never lose and that his country, family, and beloved deceased president were counting on him. He was not shown the brutality of boot camp, what PTSD does to someone, and what it looks and feels like to have your spine severed by a bullet. He was raised as a good American Catholic boy who belived that being a good American, supporting his country even if it meant giving his life for it, made him worthy in the eyes of God.
ReplyDeleteThe clip where Kovic and Charlie argue with and assault each other was shocking and very different from how I had imagined it from the book. I had not registered the animosity they held towards each other when reading, but it was evident (understatement) in the film clip. The similarities between war and recreational sport are incredibly startling to me, and this clip made these similarities even more evident to me. On a surface level, Kovic and Charlie fight over who has killed the most babies. This is both heartbreaking and disturbing but also shows how easily the overcoming of obstacles and suffering, in general, can be made into a competition. They are not necessarily bragging but both men feel and know their experiences are not understood and have reached the last straw in terms of people saying they have suffered worse. Both men can relate to each other, as they are in similar situations. They both need to be understood; a need that is incredibly difficult for them to express as they have been trained to separate their emotions from themselves to get through the war. War has become a competition. No one wants to lose, and a marine “never loses.”
Kovic writes:
“there was a soldier
tapdancing softly in the rain
above the coffin
six feet above, the people praying” (p 126)
This poem/excerpt is beautiful but I think it has stayed with me because I do not know what it means. I underlined “tapdancing” in my book because it could mean many things in my interpretation of the novel. It is the only delicate moment in the book. It could also relate to Kovic’s desire to use his legs again. And why the rain? And he refers to the people as “six feet above” while most writers that I have read have refered to those who are “six feet under” rather than the living. I am curious to hear what the rest of the class (and you) thinks about this excerpt.
1. I do believe that Ron Kovic was lied to. He went to the marines to prove his masculinity and instead came home in his eyes, without it. All of the ads for the marines never mentioned any of the bad stuff that could happen or the hardships that marines face so Kovic went into it blind. Also, now Kovic watches as more people are being lied to. In the reading he talks about not being given a chance to speak about the war but people who did not go to the war are speaking about it in front of crowds like they are experts but they don't actually know what its like.
ReplyDelete2. I thought the scene where Kovic and the other veteran in the clip were in wheel chairs screaming at each other about who had it worse brought the realities and traumas of Kovic's story to life and to a whole other level. It's evident that these two men have gone through and seen things that no one should have to see as they argue about who has killed the most babies. "Don't shit me, Kovic. You never killed a baby."...."Maybe I killed more babies than you did!" What a horrific experience you have had to have where you can yell argue with someone later about who has killed the most babies. It was shocking.
3. One thing in particular that jumped out to me in this reading was when Kovic was talking about how he is essentially dead yet no one, including himself, has accepted the fact that this is his final state. It's so sad when he finally starts to realize that his condition is not going to change and he won't get better but he also won't die so he is trapped and stuck.
Prompt One: I do think that Kovic was tricked. Haven’t you heard? “Marines never lose,” but he sure as anything, has lost so much. Again, as witnessed often in our night’s readings and clips, Kovic focuses on his penis’s function, stripped away from him, left somewhere in Vietnam. Kovic was a marine, but he lost many parts of his identity thanks to his intense training and traumatic war experiences. He even lost control of his body from the chest down. The marines in the posters, or recruiting at school, all stand straight as rods. The brave men in the movies Kovic watched as a kid lied to him too. They never got paralyzed, and this wasn’t what he signed up for.
ReplyDeletePrompt Two: The scene in which Kovic and Charlie are abandoned on the Mexican roadside seemed rather primal to me. They were shouting, then spitting in each other’s faces, and finally rolling on the floor trying to pin the other. There doesn’t seem to be much thought aside from an instinctual release of pent up anger toward the world. I don’t get the sense that Charlie is actually mad at Kovic, rather that they are the only two that understand each other’s pain in the moment, and that this is the way in which they must deal with it.
Prompt Three: I liked the scene in which Kovic and Tommy reunited after the parade. Their whole embrace, and the moments between as they cried, was quite touching to me. The idea that in a moment only two men understand each other is revisited here as “the crowd gather[s] now watching the two friends almost with curiosity.” And what’s beautiful is that they don’t need to talk: “‘Let’s get out of here,’ he said….” and they just sit together in front of an old friend’s house. No words needed because they are both thinking the same thing.
1.)Kovic was tricked into joining the marines and eventually the war not only because of war propaganda, but also his childhood which idealized marines and war in general. I agree with Keyes that the image of war that was given to him was portrayed as single story of glory and heroism up until he joined the Marines. Kovic grew up in a world, unlike us, that was infested with war. War reached him through every aspect of his life: his friends, his sports, and his school, but the “true war story” was left out. Once he followed the good American boy way and joined the army to serve his country, he realized almost everything the war stood for in America was a lie once he arrived in Vietnam.
ReplyDelete2.) The intensity of the second scene shocked me. Reading the book, I have more freedom to make my own perception of Kovic, but this scene forced me to watch the reality, which was much harsher than I imagined.. The war led to a paradigm shift in how Kovic viewed God shown both in the book and movie. The war makes men kill going against God’s rule of “Thall shalt not kill,” therefore how can one believe in war and in God at the same time? This is the question Kovic grapples with going into the war as a devoted christain and coming back a broken lied to body.
3.) The quote, “Oh Jesus, he mumbled to himself, you gotta help me, you gotta find me a woman, someone to love this broken body of mine”(126) jumped out at me. This quote highlights his desperation to be loved. It not only shows how he thinks finding a woman to love him will cure or ease his suffering, but also illustrates how isolated he feels. He wants to rely on God or a woman’s love to help him, but deep down I believe he understands that he is alone in his fight against his PTSD and his paralyzed body.
1. "They tricked him." That's what Naima Dobbs said on four years ago when we were talking about Chapter 3. By the point in the book we're at now, Kovic makes clear he feels as though he was tricked, bamboozled, fooled, not "told I was going to come back from the war without a penis." Do you think he was tricked? Why or why not?
ReplyDeleteI greatly believe that he was tricked. In a sense, society itself during that time (and still does) developed the perfect environment to entice Kovic into the marines. By promoting the ideal of masculinity, it spurred boys like Kovic into joining the army. In doing so, Kovic stayed ignorant to the actual consequences and conflicts when joining the marines, as the only depiction he was able to associate the marines with was being a courageous hero. However, in reality, the idealistic appeal of strength and bravery of a marine is a facade for the actual gruesome hardships they must first go through. Similarly to what we discussed in class, society itself promotes the indoctrination of people such as Kovic. Surely if Kovic knew the consequences of war, he would not sign up for it, along with many other people.
2. Pick one of the clips above: your reaction to it? And: does it help illuminate what we've been reading? Is it what you pictured when you read?
In the clip, Thou Shall Not Kill, it heavily illuminates the idea that Kovic has been lied to. Tom Cruise embodies Kovic, stating that everything he ever knew was a lie. He states that the very God his mother taught him is dead. “I don’t believe in him anymore… God is as dead as my legs.” In addition, he points the “finger” at his mother, stating that she was the one who encouraged him to join the war, even though in religion, he is not supposed to kill women and children. “Thou Shall Not Kill.” This further proves that Kovic believes he was lied to. He wishes his mother would have told him that war itself went against all of the principles she taught him, wondering how she could encourage him to join the army if she knew that. In addition, the whole purpose of the war, to fight communism, is a lie to Kovic too. They stated that it was a treacherous thing, something to be disposed of, yet he still had to kill women and children. However, I believe the most heartbreaking scene was during the end of the video when Kovic repeats, “I’m so sorry you’re sad mom. I’m so-sorry.” He feels like a burden to his family.
3. This last reading: what in it especially jumped out to you? What stays with you from it. And why?
I think what really stuck to me was Kovic’s experience back at the hospital, a place he fought so hard to get out of. There, he was nothing more than a task to take care of, as the doctors call him the wrong name, even so far as to call him by a number, “Seventeen” (142). The hospital itself is enclosing, making Kovic feel trapped. “It is like being in a prison. But it is not a prison, it is a hospital” (142). In addition, Kovic reiterates the factory theme. It really stuck to me because it was similar to what we talked about in class today: how the marines break away individuality and build the men from the ground up. “No one ever leaves this place without losing something… This place is more like a factory to break people than to mend them and put them back together again” (142-143). I think the whole experience would definitely feel traumatizing. The environment itself would be claustrophobic, along with the feeling that you are not important, not even worth someone’s time and dignity to remember who you are.
1. Yes, I do believe that Kovic was tricked. But so too was the rest of the country. As we read earlier in the book, Kovic’s idealistic all-American childhood shaped him in such a way that he came to value masculinity above anything else, shortly followed by his country, and God. In an effort to fulfill these values, Kovic joined the Marine Corps because it offered him a way to prove his masculinity while also serving his country, and, by default, God. Yet what the Marine Corps failed to provide was an accurate depiction of the entire truth. They failed to mention the cost of war and how destructive it can be to one’s body, mind, and spirit.
ReplyDelete2. I think that the scene in which Kovic comes home and gets into an argument with his mother is extremely powerful and complex. There is so much to unpack in those few minutes: the perverse role of religion, Kovic’s relationship with his mother, the deceit of his country, how he feels trapped in his body. Though the movie expanded the scene and the argument Kovic has with his mother, the sentiment still feels very real and true to the story. In fact, I found the visual to be rather clarifying because in the reading I was unsure of what emotions Kovic’s mother was portraying when she says, “He’s drunk, he’s drunk…We’ve got a drunk for a son.” To me this scene really brings to light the immense toll war takes not only on the soldier, but on their immediate family and those closest to them.
3. One thing that stuck with me from the reading was the scene in which the prostitute cries once she realizes Kovic is paralyzed: “The tears began to roll down her face. She was sitting in the bed next to him crying.” For some reason, the imagery of this scene was very touching and meaningful to me, though perhaps Kovic does not view it as more than another occasion on which he is pitied, especially when “She didn’t even ask for his money, she didn’t even want that.”
1. Yes, I think he was tricked. He was “brainwashed” from a young age into thinking that communism was evil, that all soldiers return heroes, and that war was the answer. His views were heavily influenced by his parents, church, school, friends, and community. He joined the Marines, not knowing what he was getting himself into. I would consider this to be a trick.
ReplyDelete2. Ron Kovic’s speech is an incredible scene, and it is almost exactly how I pictured it. When the crying baby brings Kovic back to Vietnam, he is unable to speak. He is not only physically paralyzed, but also emotionally. This scene shows how PTSD affects him, and after I watched it, I felt sickened and awful. It definitely helps illuminate what we have been reading because it shows how he still has trouble expressing his emotions (he cannot tell his true war story). He knows that he has been lied to, but he continues to tell these same lies to others. He is still part of the “factory.”
3. The scene that jumped out to me from the reading was the car ride to the Memorial Day parade. The commander starts “laughing almost hysterically” when talking about Billy Morris, a soldier who died from getting “hit in the head with a tree” (113). Instead of crying or getting angry, the commander laughs. This is extremely powerful to me because this is such an unexpected response. Only someone who has actually experienced war would laugh at a soldier’s death. The commander is so emotionally distraught that all he can do is laugh at the sheer absurdity of a war in which men like Billy are dying.
I think that Kovic was “tricked” in that the movies of his time portrayed the bravery of war through heroes like John Wayne without the trauma and PTSD, but he also “tricked” himself. Kovic was somewhat naive in his interpretation of war in his early life. To an extent, he convinced himself that war was glamorous based on his interpretation of the media and the ads for the marines. Although the marines displayed themselves in a very positive light, it took Kovic, himself, to become fully indoctrinated.
ReplyDeleteThe scene where Kovic gives a speech following the Fourth of July parade was very powerful to me. It really illuminated the idea that he has to “save face” in front of the audience. Kovic speaks about the positives, saying “I have my hands, my eyes, my ears. I have my heart,” but conceals the pain of all the parts of the body that he left off the list. Furthermore, when Kovic begins to hear the baby crying and has a flashback to his service in Vietnam, the intensity of his PTSD is so much more than I had imagined when I read Kovic’s words about it. He can’t control himself and is overcome with trauma.
The part of the reading where Kovic unexpectedly reunites with his childhood friend Tommy Law stuck with me. Kovic felt out of place in the parade before Tommy arrived, stating, “These people had never been to his war,” meaning that they did not understand his story (120). Still, Kovic masked this emotion throughout the parade until Tommy appeared. Tommy understands Kovic in many more ways than the men who spoke at the parade that day. Tommy both grew up with Kovic and fought in war. Because Tommy has a much better idea of the things that Kovic is going through Kovic finally shows real emotion. “He wanted to pull away in embarrassment and hold back his feelings that seemed to be pouring out of him” (122). This scene really contrasts what Kovic conceals versus what he feels.
Yes, he was tricked, but I’m not sure who the “they” refers to. My immediate assumption is that “they” refers to the Marines, in which case, yes, they did trick him. Nothing in their advertisements points to the violence and vulgarity that even boot camp throws at the recruits, let alone war. However, it wouldn’t have worked if the boys weren’t already primed to believe the messaging being thrown at them. Perhaps, in that case, “they” refers to the society that taught him to idolize war. If so, I’m not sure whether it was trickery. I don’t know if his societal indoctrination is deliberate enough to call it trickery if everyone is not only complicit in perpetuating this lie, but genuinely believes it as the truth. The Marines would have known what war was really like, and still continued to advertise the way they did, promoting an image of being tough, elite, and heroic, with no Surgeon General’s warning attached about coming back without a penis. In contrast, consider Kovic’s mother. In the movie version of Born on the Fourth of July, when Kovic is drunk and falling apart, he blames his mother for, essentially, making him go to Vietnam. His mother was almost certainly complicit in promoting masculinity, competition, and patriotism as ideals. At the same time, she genuinely thought she was doing the best she could for him by encouraging him to be competitive and to believe in God and America. She is no more aware of war is really like than he is, for all that she is one of the voices that pushes him towards the Marines.
ReplyDeleteThis detail is not terribly relevant in the grand scheme of things, but I got very stuck on how hippie Kovic looked in the Mexico clip of Born on the Fourth of July. Because this book is a war story, I’d always pictured him as a veteran, a soldier, and disabled. I had forgotten that none of those descriptors preclude him from looking like a normal, unkempt person, even one whose hairdo makes him look more like an anti-war demonstrator to me than the neat, former soldier he presents as when on display in the Memorial Day parade. It made me more aware of my own biases in approaching this book; like many characters in the book, I was guilty of thinking of him only as a veteran. I had assumed that all that pain from coming back from the war would somehow be visible, even if it explicitly told me in the book that he cried in the shower and tried to keep up appearances with his family.
The hospital scene was especially striking to me because of its parallels with the current treatment of veterans. Although it is definitely reiterating earlier themes of dehumanization in the hospital, when combined with his lack of voice in the Memorial Day celebrations, his invisibility is painfully apparent. As he says in the hospital, “It is so easy to lose it all here. The whole place functions so smoothly, but somewhere along the way I am losing, and all the rest of the people whom I can’t see in the rooms around me are losing too…No one ever leaves this place without losing something” (142). In a place that is meant to provide veterans with healing, the workers fail to treat him as a human being and make him worse, not better. He is once again reduced to feeling worthless, which was part of what made his paralysis so painful to him in the first place. Moreover, the hospital is so underfunded that there isn’t even a spare pump when his fails shortly post-surgery. This scene is shockingly similar to the situations described in the news a year or so ago about how massively wasteful and inefficient the VA was. It’s upsetting how, in many ways, we haven’t gotten around to listening to the uglier war stories, nor really paid attention to what happens to the returning soldiers after the hype and parades.
1. I do believe that Kovic was tricked because I think that the marines engaged in false advertising. I do not think that Kovic was once told about many of the repercussions of battle, such as loss of appendages or loss of movement of those appendages, or loss of a will to live. Kovic says, “…if I had seen someone like me that day, a guy in a wheelchair, just sitting there in front of the senior class not saying a word…maybe things would have been different. Maybe that’s all it would have taken (154).” This quote shows that no one had truly informed Kovic that his body could stop functioning with the same intensity. The marines are not inclined to show that side of war. The side of war that makes a person broken with no will to build himself up, again. Why would they? They are trying to recruit people, not make them think critically about the consequences of their actions. That is why they chose the two men that they did to talk with Kovic’s senior class, and not veterans in wheelchairs. If the high schoolers and learned not only about the honor and pride that comes with the marines, but also the complete demoralization in training and after the war, the students would have been far less inclined to join.
ReplyDelete2. This first clip on the top of the page of Kovic giving a speech at Memorial Day was far different from how I imagined. The immediate aspect that surprised me was actually looks. Although, in class we keep discussing how young Kovic is, the narrative of him ages him in my mind. Like what Claire said in class a few days ago, he has all of the traits of an old man. He is grumpy, irritable, has erectile dysfunction, and generally needs assistance. The clip reminded me that in reality he is quite young. Also, the fact that he gave a speech was different from how the Memorial Day parade went in the book. He and Eddie Dugan were “not even given the chance to speak”(120). Someone else spoke those lines about America needing to win the war.
3. When Kovic is carried out of the car so he can go onto the stage, he says that he is “having to be carried out of the car into the chair like a baby.(118)” Kovic became a marine and served two tours in Vietnam to become a man, and describes many other people as being babyish. During training, he describes the fat boy being “just like a little frightened baby”(99). However, instead of feeling like a man, he now feels more like a baby than ever before, and at a Memorial Day parade of all places. A place where he should be championed for his heroic service, rather than denigrated to a useless tool.
1) All of the stigma around Vietnam and the Marines illustrates a positive, honorable, heroic story. No one talked about the destruction, the grief and personal loss that was made possible through the war. And much less, no one told him there was a chance he could come home paralyzed and impotent. Kovic was under the false impression that the war would not leave him devastated, and clearly that was not the case. One can only begin to imagine hoe confusing and disappointing this realization was for Kovic when he came home, and the permanence of his situation clearly does not make his injury any easier to deal with.
ReplyDelete2) I was particularly affected by the scene between Kovic and his mother. In particular, there were many half-sentences that she screamed during their argument that she left unfinished and were not acknowledged, but were particularly powerful. For example, she threatened multiple times to kick him out of the house, which, in my opinion, is completely ridiculous. He couldn’t take care of himself on his own, and she knows this. In this moment, she would rather see her son unable to function on his own than take care of him at home. It’s incredibly disheartening and disappointing, not to mention completely unhelpful to Kovic’s situation.
3) I was particularly struck by the scene between a Kovic and his childhood friend on the stage. Even after having not seen each other for years, they still have the same (if not a much more elevated, deeper one) of each other. They understand each other’s struggles, their fears and anxieties around the war. And most important,y, they know each other. They have known each other for years, and have watched each other be destroyed by the war. This is a special kind of born that only they share, and an extremely valuable one.