47 pages • 1 hour read
Dispatches
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Herr
Herr is the narrator in the story, and even though he shares the name of the author, Michael Herr, the narrator should be viewed as separate from the author because of Herr’s assertion that much of Dispatches is fictional. Even though Herr’s name is only mentioned once in the book, every moment in the narrative is filtered through his perspective. He is the one that assigns meaning to the encounters with the Marines, the Vietnamese people, and other war correspondents.
The core question of Dispatches is what compels Herr to cover the Vietnam War. It is a question that never gets an answer. There are hints that Herr feels there is something lacking in his background or makeup that Vietnam can fill. Toward the end of the book Herr says, “I think Vietnam is what we had instead of happy childhoods” (244). Later, however, he suggests that the experience of war did not succeed in filling what was empty, or fixing what was broken: “I hadn’t been anywhere, I’d performed half an act; the war only had one way of coming to take your pain away quickly” (251). Whatever demons drove Herr to Vietnam were not dissipated there, only put on hold.
We do not learn a lot about Herr through what he says about himself, but through his reactions to the people and events around him. He never goes into his backstory, but the reader gets a strong sense of Herr by how he perceives. He has a strong voice and his opinions and reactions are specific and unvarnished.
Tim Page
By the time Page returns to Vietnam, Herr has already been in Vietnam for several months. Herr has heard a lot about Page even before meeting him. Page was an orphan, and as a teenager he left London and worked his way across Europe, India, and Southeast Asia. He does not travel because he wants to take photographs, but rather “picked up a camera the way you or I would pick up a ticket” (236). Being a photographer is his way in to places he wants to go, and he will go to lengths for pictures that very few other photographers are willing to go.
Page has narrowly escaped death three times before Herr meets him, and has decided to leave Vietnam for good. But when his friend, Flynn, returns to Vietnam, Page follows him back. Herr, Page, and Flynn spend one month covering the war together. After Herr returns to the United States, he hears that Page has been hitwith shrapnel again and he is not expected to live. Page not only survives but proves the doctors wrong when they say that he will be paralyzed on the left side of his body for the rest of his life and will never walk again.
Page is the physical manifestation of the ambivalence that the war correspondents seem to feel toward the war. Even though his experiences in Vietnam break his body and age him prematurely, he still looks positively about his time there: “Ohhhh, war is good for you, you can’t take the glamour out of that” (248).
Sean Flynn
The son of movie star Errol Flynn, Flynn had a relatively short career as a film actor. His need to escape his father’s movie star status, as well as his own, seems to be a driving force in his decision to cover the war. But even though he does not try to trade on his family, past, or good looks, it can be difficult for others to ignore: “[…] Flynn was special. We all had our movie-fed war fantasies, the Marines too, and it could be totally disorienting to have this outrageously glamorous figure intrude on them, really unhinging” (194).
Herr has pictures of Flynn but not any pictures taken by Flynn, saying that Flynn “was in so deep he hardly bothered to take them after a while” (253-54). In April of 1970, Flynn and Dana Stone rode their motorcycles into Cambodia, at the same time that the North Vietnamese had advanced into that country. Neither man was ever heard from again, and at the end of Dispatches, they are classified as Missing in Action.
Although Michael Herr does not cover this in the book, it is believed that the two men were held captive for a year and then killed by the Khmer Rouge. Herr’s description of Flynn and Dana’s death is short, but the affection that he feels for the two men is obvious.
Dana Stone
Stone has made his home in Saigon with his wife. Originally from Vermont, the Marines describe him as “that wiry little red-headed cat, crazy motherfucker, funny as a bastard” (197). Dana makes friends everywhere he goes, in part because he has this unbounded energy, and is willing to take risks, like walking in front of a group of Marines looking for booby traps or ambushes. He is “twenty-five years old with sixty-year-old eyes” and takes beautiful pictures. Dana is on assignment with CBS News when he and Flynn are captured by the People’s Army of Vietnam and then handed over to the Khmer Rouge.
Mayhew
Herr has said in interviews that both Mayhew and Day Tripper are completely fictional characters. While in Vietnam, Herr was constantly writing down bits of dialog he heard. He said it was his main purpose for being there, and that very few lines were completely invented, but a character might be a composite of a number of people he met in Vietnam.
Mayhew’s death is one of the few that the reader experiences. Mayhew is easy to like. He is young, crass, and shorter than the other guys. The others describe him as crazy, but in an affectionate kind of way. Although the same age, Day Tripper seems to have a paternalistic attitude toward the less mature Mayhew. At nineteen-years-old,Mayhew is unsuccessfully trying to grow a mustache. He is protective of others. When shots are heard outside their tent, Mayhew covers Herr to protect him from incoming fire. He has a child’s sense of being immortal, and puts himself in dangerous situations that Day Tripper shies away from. Toward the end of Herr’s time with Mayhew and Day Tripper, Mayhew extends his tour for another four months, an action that upsets Day Tripper. When Mayhew tries to reassure Day Tripper that it is only four months, Day Tripper says, “Four months? Baby, four seconds in this whorehouse’ll get you greased” (131).
For most of Dispatches, we are introduced to a character at their death. Mayhew is the first character we get to experience in life before he is lost to us.
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