1. Parallelism

In the beginning of chapter 1, I found parallelism present on page 3 in which Tom O'Brien is describing the reasoning behind why each soldier carries the things that he does. "Because the land was mined and booby-trapped... Because you could die so quickly... Because the nights were cold and the monsoons were wet..." The use of because as the first word in the sentences continues on for some time to provide justification for why each soldier had to carry what he did. The entire 25 pages of chapter 1 do nothing but explain what these men carry. I am PRAYING this book gets less dull. I do not understand the point of having a 25 page long list of random items the men had with them. It could have been explained in about 10 pages I'd say. That seems way more reasonable to me. Alls you need to understand is that each soldier has a different personality and a different value system which makes them find certain things important that others do not. And I'm sure this will play a role later on in the novel. But I understood that idea in about 5 pages so I do not see the need for the following twenty. Oh well! Time to continue...