Comment on language/style

King often references the President who is in office when he notates the time period in these stories. For instance, when Bobby is thinking about how long it will take him to buy a bike, he notes at one point, “At this rate Nixon would have been President for two years before he was riding to school” (33). In another example, Blind Willie is described as being a “Fifth Avenue fixture since the days of Gerald Ford” (552).

Also in this book, King uses phrases and images to refer back to Lord of the Flies to tie the stories together. For instance, one of the images in Lord of the Flies is that of the pig’s head cut off and displayed on a sharpened stick. This image is mirrored in “Why We’re in Vietnam” when Malenfant “announced his intention of cutting off the fuckin pig’s head” (606). Bobby had believed as a child that Sully-John would have a life untouched by grief, but notes he learns that “for Sully the stick turned out to be waiting after all” (318). Sully-John’s sharpened stick came in the form of the Vietnam War.