In Pharaoh’s Army (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Tobias Wolff
- First Published: 1994
- Type of Work: Memoir
- Time of Work: 1967-1968
- Setting: My Tho, a Vietnamese town in the Mekong Delta; Washington, D.C.; San Francisco; Oxford, England; and various military bases stateside
- Principal Characters: Toby, Sergeant Benet, Canh Cho, Hugh Pierce, Stu Hoffman, Keith Young, Doc Macleod, Pete Landon, Captain Kale, Vera, Geoffrey, Arthur (Duke)
- Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir
- Subjects: 1960’s, Memory, Parents and children, Social issues, Violence, Vietnam War, Fathers, Death or dying, Military life or service, Soldiers, Television or television broadcasting, Reincarnation
- Locales: Washington, D.C., San Francisco, CA, Vietnam, Oxford, England
Pharaoh’s army is the United States Army in Vietnam. The soldier is Toby, a late adolescent who joins the army on a whim. Despite the title’s negative association of the United States with the oppressive pharaoh of the biblical exodus, this memoir contains no vitriolic antiwar tirade. The purposelessness of the American presence in Vietnam and the young soldier’s own lack of solid dedication to the war effort are, indeed, a backdrop to events in In Pharaoh’s Army: Memories of the Lost War, but the real focus is the young soldier and his search for himself.
In this...
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