Adam's Suicide

Adam takes a fatalistic approach to his shipping off to war. Consider the conversation he has with Miranda. "'Do you know what the average expectation of a sapping party is after it hits the job?' 'Something speedy, I suppose.' 'Just nine minutes' (283) His casual discussion of his own mortality makes him seem resigned to the war, maybe even embracing it - he says "'the war is simply too good to be true'" (282).

It's a part of his training. He lets on to Miranda, "'I gouged the vitals out of more sandbags and sacks of hay than I could keep track of.'" (283) And the narrator describes Adam in terms of sand and hay - "He was wearing his new uniform and he was all olive and tan and tawny, hay colored and sand colored from hair to boots.'" (278) His basic training amounts to gouging effigies in his own image - he is being trained to kill himself.

In class Dr. Cook let us know that the flu epidemic was called the enemy within, and the flu is what kills Adam - not the war. As a character who can flippantly mention his approaching death, who can embrace the war (what he thinks will be the reason for his death), and who has been trained in destroying things like him, what do we make of his succumbing to the enemy within?

He seems to have been on the road to succumbing all along.