Chapter 1, Part II Breathing In Summary and Analysis

Herr recalls his first few weeks as a war correspondent. He remembers as a child looking at photographs in magazines of dead people, killed during war. The impact he feels resembles looking at sexual pornography, a combination of shame and shock along with fascination as to how this can appear so unnatural and yet be so real. This leads to a Vietnam scene where American soldiers ensure that the enemy soldiers killed in recent action are dead by kicking each in the head, then shooting them again. Herr looks at the face of one of the soldiers who did the shooting and sees something like sexual arousal.

People regularly ask Herr why he came to Vietnam. His motivation may be to further his writing career, but the war impacts him more powerfully than...