Chapter 28: The War — Summary and Analysis

⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.

(February–May 1943)

This chapter contains graphic depictions of combat violence, death, and the aftermath of battle, including a mass suicide attack. It also includes a brief sexual encounter. If you have not yet read Chapter 28 of Great Circle, you may wish to do so before continuing.

Summary

In February 1943, Jamie receives his orders to serve as a combat artist in Alaska. The letter instructs him to express, realistically or symbolically, the essence or spirit of war—without ever defining what that essence might be. He is permitted to state a preference for his assignment and requests Alaska, not because he expects to find the war's essence there, but because he is curious to see the place that once held Marian's attention. He reasons that he might as well work inward from the war's edges.

Jamie sails from San Francisco to Kodiak aboard a naval transport that previously carried cattle. He sketches soldiers playing cards, sunbathing on deck, and stacked in bunks under sickly yellow light. He stands watch like everyone else, and at night some men cry while others grind their teeth. For a week he sees only water, and the ship seems to churn in place at the center of a flat, empty sea. He reflects that his father's life was spent at the center of such disks and wonders what that does to a person.

In Kodiak, a skeptical captain greets him with sarcasm, asking what the navy could possibly want with a painter. Jamie begins working through the short, cold days, painting the frozen harbor, orcas, bears foraging in garbage, sea lions heaped on docks, and the mud, snow, barracks, hangars, and military equipment. He loses canvases to the wind before learning to lash them down. He eats meat because it seems impossible not to, and he drinks but not too much.

He begins a brief affair with a nurse named Diane. After their second outing, they have sex in the cab of an unlocked bulldozer. He thinks of Sarah afterward and feels a heavy melancholy. The captain, having grown to like Jamie's paintings, asks for one of the harbor personally. When Jamie delivers it, he asks to go to the action—a word that makes him queasy, since it is chipper, dishonest shorthand for violent death.

Jamie is put on a PBY Catalina seaplane bound for Dutch Harbor. For five days, weather prevents takeoff. On the sixth day, the plane finally flies, bouncing through gray cloud, and Jamie holds his paint box against his chest, wishing Marian were flying the plane. In Dutch Harbor, bombed by the Japanese six months earlier but mostly repaired, he makes more paintings and sends them off. He is only waiting to go west again, following the Aleutian chain toward Attu and Kiska.

He flies to Adak, where he stays in a Quonset hut with army journalists. The Japanese fly over sometimes, strafing and bombing without much damage; the tundra swallows their bullets and bombs. Jamie witnesses a wounded man being unloaded from a jeep, part of his jaw missing, and sketches him from memory later, feeling dirty about it. He encloses a sketch of P-40s in a letter to Marian, wishing he could talk to her about Alaska. He reflects that the essence of war sometimes seems to be the accumulation and transportation of stuff—the endless ships disgorging everything needed to feed, house, and entertain ten thousand men. He sends a watercolor of ships in the harbor to Sarah without a note.

In April, bombardment against the Japanese increases, and invasion seems imminent. Jamie asks to go along when it happens. The executive officer is puzzled but noncommittal. On May 11, word comes that the invasion of Attu has begun—not Kiska, as assumed. It was supposed to take three days, but there are far more Japanese soldiers on the island than expected, and conditions are bad. After a week, Jamie flies with a bomber crew but sees nothing through the fog; they drop bombs into gray nothing just to conserve fuel.

After two weeks, the XO arranges for Jamie to go to Attu. He travels by ship and landing craft, then hikes inland with eight other men, following tractor tracks through the mud. Scattered bodies of Japanese soldiers begin to appear beside the road. In the bivouac area, a lieutenant tells him to make himself at home. That evening, not far away, Japanese soldiers drink sake in gulps. Their colonel has decided against surrender, planning a desperate dawn attack to seize American howitzers. A thousand men remain. The wounded are given pistols to shoot themselves or are dispatched with morphine or grenades.

At dawn, screams wake Jamie. A man near him is bayoneted where he lies, but Jamie is overlooked. He struggles from his sleeping bag and runs uphill with his rifle, half falling into a foxhole already occupied by the body of a long-dead Japanese soldier. Three Japanese soldiers cut the guy lines of the medical tent and begin bayoneting the patients inside. Jamie brings up his rifle and shoots all three—one in the back of the head, one in the shoulder and then the chest, and the third through the forehead. He sets aside his rifle, takes out a small notebook and pencil, and draws. His hand shakes badly. He will later realize he has covered pages with garbled scribbles and blotches out of which no sense can be made.

Key Events

Jamie receives orders to serve as a combat artist in Alaska and requests the assignment because of Marian.
He sails from San Francisco to Kodiak, sketching soldiers during the voyage.
In Kodiak, he paints the harbor and military installations and has a brief affair with a nurse named Diane.
He flies to Dutch Harbor and then Adak, where he stays with army journalists and witnesses the aftermath of Japanese bombing raids.
He writes to Marian about Alaska and sends a watercolor to Sarah without a note.
On May 11, the invasion of Attu begins; it takes far longer than the expected three days.
Jamie travels to Attu by ship and landing craft, then hikes inland to the rear lines.
At dawn, Japanese soldiers launch a desperate attack; Jamie kills three of them.
Afterward, his sketches devolve into garbled scribbles.

Character Development

Jamie's arc in this chapter moves him from observer to participant. Throughout the early months in Alaska, he remains an outsider—an eccentric figure at an easel in the middle of a war, painting harbors and supply lines. His request to go to the action marks a deliberate choice to stop hovering at the war's edges. When he finally kills three Japanese soldiers, the act is immediate and visceral, and his art fails him: the notebook pages fill with meaningless marks. This is the first time Jamie's identity as an artist is directly challenged by violence.

His connection to Marian deepens even in her absence. He requests Alaska because of her, wishes she were flying the plane during the turbulent flight, and writes to her about the islands. The chapter also shows his guilt about Sarah—he thinks of her during his encounter with Diane and sends her a watercolor without a note, a gesture that suggests both longing and an inability to articulate his feelings.

Themes, Symbols, or Motifs

The essence of war. The letter's instruction to express the essence or spirit of war hangs over the entire chapter. Jamie never finds a clear answer. He reflects that the essence sometimes seems to be the accumulation and transportation of stuff—the endless logistics of feeding and housing ten thousand men. The scale of the war lies in its bits and pieces, from can openers to mountains of ammunition.

Art's inadequacy. Jamie's final sketches are garbled scribbles, a direct failure of his medium. Earlier, he feels dirty about sketching a dying man from memory, sensing a helpless intimacy in the destroyed body. The chapter suggests that some experiences resist representation.

Fog as a force. Fog is described as a neutral party to the war but a powerful one. It shrouds and delays, swallows planes, and prevents Jamie from seeing anything during his bombing run. It is an impersonal, indifferent force that shapes the war as much as any army.

Dehumanization. The naval transport previously carried cattle, and Jamie thinks its new purpose is not so different. The scattered bodies along the road to Attu, the Japanese soldiers' mass suicide, and the casual way men die all point to the war's dehumanizing scale.

Isolation and waiting. The week of only water, the five days of weather delays, and the monotony of the rear lines all emphasize the war's long stretches of boredom punctuated by moments of violence.

Longing for connection. Jamie's affair with Diane, his thoughts of Sarah, and his letters to Marian all reflect a deep need for human connection in an isolating environment.

Why This Chapter Matters

This chapter is a turning point for Jamie. It takes him from the war's edges to its center, from painting supply lines to killing men. The garbled sketches at the end are a powerful image of art's limits in the face of violence. The chapter also deepens Jamie's relationship to Marian's memory—Alaska becomes a place where he can feel closer to her, even as the war transforms the landscape she once knew. The contrast between the mundane logistics of war and its sudden, brutal violence is central to the novel's exploration of how ordinary people experience extraordinary events.

Study Questions and Answers

1. Why does Jamie request Alaska as his assignment, and what does this reveal about his relationship with Marian?

Jamie requests Alaska because he is curious to see the place that had held Marian's attention, not because he expects to find the essence of war there. This reveals that Marian remains a central presence in his life even though she is absent. He is drawn to the places she cared about, and later in the chapter he wishes she were flying the plane and writes to her about the islands. Alaska becomes a way for Jamie to feel connected to her.

2. How does the chapter portray the relationship between art and violence?

The chapter suggests that art struggles to capture the reality of violence. Jamie's early paintings of harbors and supply lines are competent but distant from the war's brutality. When he sketches the dying man from memory, he feels dirty about it, sensing a helpless intimacy in the destroyed body. At the end, after killing three men, his sketches become garbled scribbles—a direct failure of his artistic ability to make sense of what he has witnessed. The chapter implies that some experiences resist representation.

3. What does Jamie mean when he reflects that the essence of war sometimes seems to be the accumulation and transportation of stuff?

Jamie observes the endless ships disgorging everything needed to feed, house, and entertain ten thousand men—huts, hangars, cold-storage buildings, movie theaters, gymnasiums, surgical suites, mountains of ammunition and spare parts. He thinks the scale of the war lies in its bits and pieces, the mundane logistics that make combat possible. This reflection suggests that war is not only violence but also an enormous industrial and bureaucratic enterprise, and that its true nature may be found in the ordinary objects that sustain it.