Fallen Angels By Walter Dean Myers: Summary

Fallen Angels, by Walter Dean Myers, tells the story about a teenage boy who goes to fight in the Vietnam War. The young boy is a black, seventeen year old and goes by the name of Richie Perry. By the time he graduates from Harlem, he decides he is going to go fight in the Vietnam War for the United States Army. Perry is sent off to basic training and when he is ready to leave for Vietnam he begins to have horrible thoughts and illusions of the war and fighting in the front. Perry has been told he has a knee problem and believes this will be able to keep him from having to fight in combat. When the time has came and Perry has arrived in Vietnam, he becomes friends with two new recruits assigned to the same squad as himself, Harold Gates, …show more content…
He starts to become annoyed with his officers and their selfishness, especially his commanding officer, Captain Stewart. Richie says that the captain is more worried about getting a raise than the safety of his own soldiers. When the platoon leader of Richie’s squad is killed during combat, Richie begins to look for answers to why he and his fellow soldiers are in Vietnam. As time goes on, Richie tries to search in himself to why he even enlisted into the army. Richie begins to wonder what he will do when it is time for him to return to a normal …show more content…
The platoon was set near Chu Lai, and that was where most of the squad had its combats. A major theme from Fallen Angels is the loss of innocence. Fallen Angels shows a great lesson on how innocence is lost throughout the war. Richie goes into the Vietnam War as a young seventeen year old boy, the war quickly changes who Richie is and turns him into a young man almost over night. Richie is ripped of his innocence as a teenage child and forced to contemplate the horror of war and how fragile their own lives are. Where the young boys only wish for order and meaning in life, they receive only chaos and