Soldier+Depression


 * The Common Soldier's Emotions**

In the book so far, Anthony goes through a roller coaster of emotions before he even sets foot into battle. In the beginning of the book (Section 1), he starts out hanging with his buddies, getting all pumped up to be in the war. They watched all of these war films, and right away, not only him, but some of the other soldiers began crying about this. Also in the begining, he emphasizes the alcohol use of all of his buddies and himself. Later in the book, Anthony tells us about one time in his room, where he was cleaning his gun, and decided to stick the muzzle in his mouth. I think that this could have been the result of him finding out that his girlfriend was cheating on him when she got a new job at a hotel, where she was telling Anthony about a "good friend". He assumed this meant that she was sleeping with him. With this theme of cheating girlfriends, one of his friends finds out, in an inadvertant way, that his girlfriend was "discussing politics" with the neighbor. They all went down to the showing room to watch a war film, when it cut out and turned into a home-made video of his wife having a "political debate", an intense one at that, with the over friendly neighbor.(:

All of these deifferent moods of Anthony are what soldiers go through on a daily basis.

Chris and Eric D worked on this in class!!!