Love & Spin

I truly love the little chapter on "love". I think I feel this way because it provides closure to one of the few emotional, personal stories in the last chapter. It is also refreshing for Martha to become a real, complex person with feelings and emotions all her own instead of a one-dimensional concept in Jimmy's mind. The sexual part did confuse me a bit though. Does Martha have some history of sexual abuse or homosexuality? Her becoming a religious missionary is similar to what many women of the past would do to get out of marraiges. The passive, apathetic expression in her eyes when he kissed her also seem to imply a sort of detachment towards sexuality. Later, her reaction towards Jimmy telling her of his past sexual intentions towards her seems very intense. Afterwards, she says "there was nothing she could do about [her reaction]" towards "the things men do", suggesting that she has some instinct or trauma against men and sexuality.
I also find it interesting that Jimmy still loves her after all of the years, even though she appears to be rather distant and damaged. Perhaps the distant quality she has is what attracts him. She is his unreachable dream. This small story also reveals the intense comaraderie that develops between the soldiers.

Spin
In the strangest way, this chapter makes me think of Stockholm syndrome. Even when people are in horrific situations, the find normalcy and become attached to the insanity. The tiny good moments almost seem not only give mirth and freedom to many of the soldiers, but also to intensify their pain and trauma. It seems nearly impossible to even begin to mentally or emotionally reconcile a situation in which one mintute you are sitting under a tree with your friend, and the next minute a simple misstep blows him into little bits all around you.
For people in their late teens and early twenties, a year at war is about five percent of their entire life. That means that much of their experiences and sense of 'average' will come from their grotesque and bizarre time at war. Perhaps people adapt to easily. They are still young "boy[s]" whose mental outlook is continuing to develop. How could a person live a healthy, idyllic, suburban life later on when their younger years were spent in trauma and chaos? The surreal polarizing positve and negative experiences jauxtaposed so immediately  would take a lifetime to even begin to process. Just look at Tim O'Brien: Around 20 years after the war had ended he was still writing about his experiences, perhaps as a way to sort them out for himself. This chapter definitely brings much more the the emotion I didn't get from the first chapter.