62 pages • 2 hours read
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PrologueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Prologue Summary
In June of 1975, Buzz Williams’s brother, Lenny, leaves for “the Corps.” Although Buzz doesn’t understand much of what’s in Lenny’s letters, he reads them often. Over the next few years, he emulates Lenny in every way, even though Lenny is now a stranger—more a Marine than his older brother.
When Lenny visits home, he teaches Buzz all about the Marine Corps. But within two years he is relocated again, this time to California. In 1985, Lenny dies in a car accident. Their father, already sick with cancer, dies in 1987. Buzz begins drinking. He enrolls in college but soon drops out, and it’s not until he speaks with Big Ray, a body-builder at the health club where Buzz works, that he remembers his dream to be a Marine and follow in Lenny’s footsteps.
Soon after enlisting he meets Gina, the first person who understands his desire to do what Lenny did. She reads the letters Lenny sent, and understands their significance, and the desire Williams feels to follow in Lenny’s footsteps.
Prologue Analysis
The Prologue outlines Williams’s reasons for joining the Marine Corps. It also establishes his strong commitment to family: first, to his brother Lenny, then to his mother and ailing father, and finally to Gina, who will later become his wife. Big Ray will also become a member of his extended Marine family. Big Ray gives Williams the guidance that neither Lenny nor his father can give. Ray is the first in a long line of mentors Williams will meet in the Marine Corps, the men who help shape him as he journeys toward becoming a soldier, fighting for a country he loves, and, eventually, passing on his learning to students in his Young Marines program.
It further establishes that this will be a journey. Williams is a child when Lenny goes off to the Marines. He does not fully become an adult until after he joins the Marines, completes training, and goes to war. It’s not until the end, when he looks back and wonders whether his children will follow in his footsteps, in the same way he followed in Lenny’s, that he has completed his journey.
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