Rat Kiley, a young army medic, is primarily concerned with keeping his youthful spirit alive and not letting this war change him, or his outlook on life. Rat Kiley considers himself the hero of his own story. A young, inexperienced medic, burdened with the task of trying to make everyone in his company feel better, and it shows in the things that he carried. It is physically evident in things like comic books, graphically illustrated and highly exaggerated stories whose main audience are young boys. These colorful novels almost always feature a super hero, the protagonist in the story who possesses an inhuman strength and uses it to his or her own advantage to save the day. It is almost as though he aspires to be the heros that are portrayed in the books that he is reading, and that he is trying to maintain his youth by morphing his feeling and responsibilities of the war into the expectations of a super hero, something substantially less weighted when it comes to the lives of his friends and the well being of himself. …show more content…
The fact that he used a candy loved by so many children to try and keep the spirits of the injured alive shows that he himself, probably relies on these types of things to keep himself going during this bleak war setting. But as much as he seemed to take on childish attributes, Rat Kiley also seemed to be the “mother figure”, so to speak, of the situation. He took on the pain and the burdens of the lives of others upon himself, as well as his own feelings, and shoved them down deep into his psyche. His unhealthy approach was most likely a crucial factor in the young mans intense breaking point. Rat’s dearest companion, Curt Lemon, the only outlet, the only joy that Rat Kiley had gotten out of being in the war had stepped on a landmine and been blown to bits right in front of his eyes. The actions that ensued were