Richi Perry, a seventeen year old high school graduate is the protagonist in Fallen Angles, written by Walter Dean Myers. He is uncertain about his future. At the beginning of the novel he is nave and unsure of himself. It is the absence of a father and an alcoholic mother that drives Richi into an unsecure world. Having no other place to go, he joins the army. The war experience changes him and he loses his naivety, but keeps his determination and gains insight into the nature of humanity.
Richi is a very bright, talented and ambitious boy, who had set on a career as a writer. Unfortunately, he is doomed by poverty. College takes a great deal of money, and he did not have the money. Furthermore, his alcoholic mother is unable to send him to college because she lacks the finical ability to do so. When Richi says, My plans, maybe just my dreams really, had been to go to college, and to write. All the other guys in the neighborhood thought I was going to college. I wasnt, and the army was the place I was going to get away from all the questions, this illustrates that Richi is lost, confused and nave. In other words, a situation of abject poverty drives Richi into naivety and the army.
When he arrives in Vietnam, Richi is struggling between what is right and wrong and the real brutality of the war. After his first combat experience, Richi slowly matures. He thinks that there is no right or wrong in a war. In a war you either kill or get killed. When Richi says, We were supposed to smile a lot and treat the people with dignity. They were supposed to think we were the good guys. That bothered me a little. I didnt like having to convince anybody that I was the good guy. We, the Americans, were the good guys, this shows that Richi believes he is one of the good guys, trying to stop the bad guys. Pursuing this further, he thinks that all the questions he had about the war were answered. However, when Richi kills his first enemy, a young Vietnamese soldier, he realizes that there are no good or bad guys. The only reason they kill each other is because they have been told so by some sort of an authority. We can see here that Richi slowly matures and loses his naivety.
As Richi starts to understand the real purpose of wars, he tries to avoid killing innocent people. Moreover, he wants to come out of the war alive. The squad becomes a second family to Richi. With his understanding of the real purpose of the war he was able to calm and provide his fellow squad members a sympathetic ear. For instance, when Lieutenant Carrol dies during action, a friend of Richi blames himself for his death. Richi, however, tells him, Wasnt your fault, man., this show that Richi is calming his squad down. (Myers, 132)
When Richi returns home, he realizes that he cannot be the same person ever again. He is still too poor to attend college. At the beginning of the novel he was nave and unsure of himself. However, as he entered the army, the war experience changed him and he lost his naivety, but kept his determination and gained insight into the nature of humanity.
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