It’s complicated: First Blood

Like horror, war stories are last resort entertainment for me. War stories, and horror, are notorious for their “everybody dies,” “life is a gift,” and “nothing about life is a given” final scenes. I steer toward fantasy and romance because of their happy endings and potential to end in a better position rather than to end in blood and misery. 

I can't get excited about everybody dying.

Therefore, I’ve never watched First Blood the movie much less read the book. I know this isn’t a war story, but a veteran returning from war drama is not that far from a war story to me since it contains so much reality that I cannot ignore.

But I recently read First Blood…twice.

It's my new favorite book.

While I couldn’t relate to the events, everything about the book (nope, not the movie)--the characters, the plot, the location, the themes--drew me in, and within the first chapter, I was hooked 

First Blood made me think because it's complicated. 

The characters' moral ambiguity intrigued me. I could empathize with their decisions. Even though their actions and reactions are extreme, they don’t seem unreasonable. I wavered between sympathizing with Rambo, the disenfranchised veteran whose been run out of numerous towns and has had enough, and Sheriff Teasle, the veteran who recognizes trouble when he sees it and tries to keep it out of his town.

Although I understood the sheriff’s perspective, I initially sided with Rambo. After all, who wants to be excluded because of how s/he looks or because of unsubstantiated assumptions? I cheered his defiance since he did nothing wrong. As a reader, the situation quickly devolves because of assumptions, misunderstandings, and poor communication was shocking, but as a human, the escalation wasn't surprising. 

Then Rambo was wrong, and I thought Teasle had good instincts. Of course, a person wants to steer clear of and protect from a potential threat. Is it unreasonable to one’s gut instinct? But then Teasle hunted Rambo through the mountains, and then Rambo started hunting the hunting party. So many of the characters' choices seemed wrong, but I couldn't condemn them for the bad choices. Even worse, I couldn't point to a "bad" or "good" guy because like real people aren't that simple.

Can I blame Rambo for his rebellion or PTSD? At what point was he in the wrong? Shouldn't bullying a person out of town be illegal? How often are people--minorities, homeless people, etc--pushed to the outskirts of society because they make other people uncomfortable? Moreover, who is responsible for the failings in this story, in society?

 My allegiance swung wildly as the themes, ethics, and philosophies (yes, philosophy and ethics of First Blood) revealed themselves—like PTSD, society versus the military, the "othering" of the military, defining events that change ethical perspectives, nature versus nurture, protecting communities, exclusionary assumptions, training people to hunt and kill without psychological support.

I mentioned Rambo to friends, family, and colleagues--none of whom had read or watched First Blood---and ended up in long discussions. We drew on example after example of how First Blood’s behaviors mirrored other aspects of society and its mistakes.

Inevitably, the conversation turned to how can society fix the mistakes. 

Ending the conflict, in the social conversations and in First Blood, was impossible. Hope, Washington was on fire and so is the world. The escalation and repeated wrongs against each other made positive resolutions difficult to find. I read frantically to discover how it would end. 

Could it end without one or both men dying? Could either man step back from the point of no return? What was fair? What was right?

The final chapters were intense. I agreed, again, with Rambo and Teasle. I anxiously read with so much compassion, frustration, and regret that when the colonel finally shot Rambo in the head, when Teasle died not long after, I felt relief for everyone involved. Somehow, the ending was cathartic as if the problem (and the world) had righted itself (unlike the unrealistic movie ending).

Just wow.