Response to mcraven-4

Rating: 8/10 (18 May 2016)

*SPOILERS*
*This review is a response to a question asked by another reviewer and not a full review*
At the most basic level, Mike returns to Vietnam to find Nick because of his promise not to leave his friend behind. Mike was driven by this promise throughout the three men's time in Vietnam--in order to ensure that Nick and Steve could return home alive, he smothered his fear during the games of Russian Roulette and crafted a plan that was dangerous at best and fatal at worst. Nick and Steve, having made no promises to each other or to themselves, cannot match Mike's strength of conviction or action, so they suffer from their trauma in different ways. Nick's fragile psychological state leads to his going AWOL and initially encountering the Frenchman who spirits him away, despite Mike's attempts to reach his friend. When Mike returns alone, he feels the weight of his failed responsibility to Nick as a result of both leaving Nick in Vietnam and contributing to Nick's mental instability. Mike's promise haunts him wherever he goes, reminding him of Nick when he meets with Linda, when he wrenches Stosh's gun away from him, and when he finds Steve and is faced with the other soldier's injuries, different from Nick's but no less painful. Each of these reminders, most particularly finding the money sent to Steve by an anonymous donor in Saigon, causes Mike to return to Vietnam, since his conscience will not allow him to abandon Nick to an unknown fate. Mike's quest to find Nick does not conclude with discovering Nick's location, however--Mike also feels obligated to return Nick to his mind and memories, and although Nick dies after retrieving a piece of his past, Mike carries his remains back to America, the land Nick felt such affection for despite his Russian ancestry, a stigma during the Cold War, as evidenced by his retort to the infirmary orderly that his name was American. Mike's promise is thus fulfilled, not in the way he might have hoped, but in a way that satisfies his memories of his best friend.