Chapters 16–18 Summary and Analysis
Chapter 16
Still skeptical of the narrator's request to join the overseas mission, the General offers him a euphemistic bargain: if he can "do what must be done," he can go. Just as he feared, the narrator realizes, "what must be done" is to take care of Sonny the way he took care of the major.
Further complicating his intentions are his instructions from Man, whose most recent letter explicitly forbids him from returning. This, his handler reminds him, is an order, not a suggestion.
Learning of the General's bargain, Bon once again offers to do the execution and let the narrator take the credit. The narrator declines but accepts Bon's advice on how to approach the issue—after all, he concedes, of the two of them, Bon is the one with the relevant insight. Before they came to the United States, Bon was a killer by trade.
Contemplating Bon's suggestions, he stops by Lana's house with a bottle of wine, then suddenly excuses himself to go to Sonny's place in a fit of confidence. Sonny assumes he's come because he's upset about Ms. Mori and apologizes for the discomfort of their prior conversation about her. Sonny stands up to pour them a round of drinks, and the narrator considers shooting him. At the last minute, he surprises himself by confessing instead—recognizing an ideological ally, he tells Sonny the truth about being a mole for the communists.
Sonny accuses him of lying, sure that it must be a trick, but the narrator insists that he's telling the truth. They argue, and the narrator shoots Sonny. Anxious and unpracticed, he then has to shoot several more times before Sonny finally dies.
Chapter 17
The following day, Bon consoles the narrator as he tries to make sense of his actions. He'd gone right back to Lana's place after the ordeal, but even that distraction hadn't been the purgative he was hoping for.
The General had been serious about his half of the bargain, and the narrator now has a ticket home to prove it. Joined by two others from the ranks, Bon and the narrator prepare to depart from the airport. The General and Madame give them each a bottle of whiskey but then pull the narrator aside—they know about Lana, and they're very disappointed in him.
The narrator and Bon arrive in Thailand, where they're met by Claude for a brief rendezvous. Intent on showing them a good time before they embark on such a dangerous mission, he takes the men to a brothel. Bon and the narrator decline and go for a walk instead, happening on a movie theater showing the film the narrator worked on. Unable to resist, the two step inside.
After cringing shamefully through the movie, which was just as heavy-handed and propagandistic as he'd feared, the narrator eyes the end credits expectantly. As they scroll by, he realizes the only thing worse than having his name tied to this feature is having it removed—he isn't listed in the credits at all. Hurt by the omission, he can't help but fixate on the other insult he's recently endured: in their admonition at the airport, the General and Madame reminded him that he, a bastard, was beneath their daughter.
In the morning, Claude drives them to their camp near the Lao border. To their dismay, the assembled forces seem much weaker than they appeared in pictures. In a debate with the admiral, Bon is asked to defend his philosophical position. He declines, instead simply saying, "I just want to kill communists."
Chapter 18
They spend two weeks at the...
(This entire section contains 972 words.)
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camp before a dozen men—including Bon and the narrator—head out on reconnaissance, led by a Lao farmer who has been involuntarily conscripted as a scout. As they trek across the border, they begin to see craters from American bombs.
As they settle in to sleep one evening, a lieutenant steps on a mine. He's killed, and his leg is blown off. Worried that leaving him there will give their enemies clues to their whereabouts, they carry him with them as they decamp. The narrator is made to carry his severed leg.
When they finally bury the man's corpse, apparitions of Sonny and the major taunt the narrator about his role in yet another death. It turns out to be just one loss among many—soon after, as they morosely take shifts crossing a river on a makeshift raft, they're ambushed, and Bon and the Narrator are taken captive.
Analysis
In chapter 16, the narrator deviates from his typical behavior in several significant ways: he finally allows himself to see Sonny as a potential ally, he drops his facade, and he blatantly disobeys orders from both the General and Man.
He's known Sonny since college, and the relationship has always been somewhat adversarial. It takes until this moment for the narrator to recognize that he and his rival have much more in common than any of his purported friends—an indication that he's allowed himself to embed into his role so far that it's easy to forget its ideological underpinnings.
This harkens back to chapter 8, when he mentions his recurring dream that he tries to remove a mask, only to discover that the mask is his own face. Crucially, this moment with Sonny is also the only time in the entire text that the narrator makes an effort to be honest about his identity.
When he accompanies Bon on the purported "suicide mission," the circumstances are almost a perfect inversion of the situation with Sonny—while Sonny is a man he dislikes who has no idea they're allies, Bon is a man he loves who has no idea they're enemies. In both sets of circumstances, the narrator defers to his higher sense of morality over the orders given by his superiors.
