No Man's Land

No Man’s Land

By S.T. Underdahl

Dov, the main character is lonely at school, doesn’t know what to do with his life, and has a brother that is the best at everything that he is not good at. Because his brother is so good at everything it makes Dov (an already not so great performer) look even worse compared to his brother.  

Brian, Dov’s brother joins the National Guard to earn money to go to college. Almost all of Brian’s actions make Dov look even worse than he already is, for example Brian always gets amazing grades when the best grade Dov and muster is a C. When Brian signed up for the National Guard he didn’t think that he would have to even come close to war. He was very wrong, he got about as close as you can get to war without being killed.  

When Brian is out in Afghanistan his parents, mostly his mom are extremely worried that they are going to lose their best son. Because Dov’s mother is so worried about Brian she doesn’t even care about anything that Dov does right, she just cares about what he does wrong. She is so worried about Brian, she watches the news for half the day to see if anything happened in Afghanistan. If there is any kind of attack on the American troops she becomes very worried and will call Brian to see if he is ok.

The moment Dov’s family get a call from the government that says that Brian has been injured in battle, Dov’s parents freak out. But when they hear that Brian is still alive and will be coming back home they start make enormous preparations. Once again Dov is left alone.

A few days after Brian is back Dov notices all kinds of weird habits that his brother has formed.  One of these habits is that Brian is using the fact that he served for the military in Afghanistan to buy alcohol. Soon Brian is addicted to all kinds of different alcohol. The worst of all of Brian’s changes due to his experiences in Afghanistan is that he has all kinds of flashbacks from the war. One of these flashbacks was when Brian, Dov, and their father went on a hunting trip into the mountains (these mountains looked a lot like the mountains in Afghanistan). When the brothers’ father went out to scout for deer, Brian had one of his flashbacks , he thought that his father was an enemy and so Brian opened fire on his dad. Luckily for his dad Brian’s gun jammed. This event could have ended very differently if Brian had succeeded to fire.

The one thought that I found most interesting in the book was how Dov, the main character, changes throughout the book. In the beginning of the book Dov is really depressed and cannot find the life he wants to live. His parents are always bugging him while Brian is the best child they could ever have had.

When Brian leaves for Afghanistan, Dov's parents go crazy with worry. But Dov doesn't get any attention from either of his parents. His father ignores him by taking on long truck driving jobs so that he can stay away from home as long as possible and all Dov's mother does is tell him to clean up his room.

These things all bog down on Dov, so right now in the story he is not having the best of times. The moment that Dov's parents get the news that Brian was seriously injured when a bomb went off and killed most of his unit. Because of his injury he was sent home to recover and go back to his family. When Brian comes home he has all kinds of new habits, all of them bad. For example, As Brian, Dov, Victoria ( Brian’s fiance ), and Dov’s mom Drive past a crowd of people this happens, “‘ Swing back around,” Brian orders, his voice high and tight. ‘Let’s take another run past there.’”(Underdahl, pg.112)  This was one of Brian’s flashbacks, when he thinks that he is still in Afghanistan and needs to be on full alert. These flashbacks are exactly what almost killed Dov’s father. After Brian almost killed his dad, Dov’s family finally started to realize that Brian had changed tremendously. After Dov became a little bit more respected by his family, this in turn made him feel better about himself and about his life.

What I learned from this book is that once someone has gone through a tragic event they might look normal from the outside, in other words not physically hurt or impaired, that person can have changed tremendously on the inside. First Brian was a very nice and talented young man and after he came back from the war, he had become a shocked, aggressive, and unwelcoming man. After reading this book I truly realized how shocking and crazy a war can be. What I found even more shocking was what that war can do to a person.