In the book Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers, the main character Richie struggles with the reality of war, which contradicts the war he believed he was entering. The book shows racial conflicts among the soldiers. The loss of innocence of young soldiers. How soldiers face the horrors of war. All of these factors change Richie's outlook on the Vietnam War he entered. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Richie, a young black soldier from Harlem, has faced racism his entire life. Even though this made his life hard, it never put him in the line of fire in his daily life. “Richie hears that the old squad leader, Sargent Sampson, has been sent home. His replacement is the racist Sergeant Donagan, who always places black soldiers in the most dangerous positions. At the beginning of their tour of duty, there are racial and ethnic tensions among squad members, often resulting in physical confrontations..‚(Spark Notes). Racial issues made an already miserable war, even more difficult for Richie, being the most venerable to attack based on the color of a skin even if they were from the same unit, fighting for the same side shows the different problems with the Vietnam War. Soldiers in Vietnam were not all adult men, but teenagers who had not known the world. ‚The title of the novel Fallen Angels immediately underlines the theme of youth and innocence‚ (Spark Notes). When Richie entered Vietnam he was young in many ways, innocent even more so. Richie was nineteen, fresh out of high school, had never left Harlem, had never smoked a cigar, drank wine, or, most importantly to Riche, made love to a woman. These young men were expected to go out and fight an enemy that many of them did not know, or did not know the exact reason for the fight. In the fourth chapter Lieutenant Carroll states: "All soldiers are warrior angels." Dan Myers holds this theme of innocence above all others, race, class, or religion. War soon turns naive boys into hardened young men. The unspeakable horrors that surround the boys force them to contemplate a world that does not conform to their childish and simplistic ideas. Where they want to see only a separation between right and wrong, they instead find moral ambiguity. Where they want to see order and meaning, they find only chaos and meaninglessness. Where they want to find heroism, they find only the selfish instinct of self-preservation. These realizations destroy the boys' innocence, pushing them prematurely into adulthood‚ (Spark Notes). Growing up is something every young person has to go through, even if the violent and dramatic ways it manifests itself in war are not a positive way. War affects soldiers in many ways, more negative than positive. Like all the other soldiers in Fallen Angels, Richie joins the army with the illusion of what war is. Like many American citizens, he learned about war from films and stories that portray battle as heroic and glorious, the army as efficient and organized, and war as an efficient endeavor that depends on skill. What soldiers actually find in Vietnam bears almost no resemblance to such a fictionalized version of the war. The military is highly inefficient. Most officers are far from heroic and think only of their own lives and careers rather than those of their soldiers. In the heat of battle, soldiers think only of self-preservation and how to personally survive the chaos and violence. Paralyzed by fear,