53 pages • 1 hour read
Joe HaldemanThe Forever War
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1974A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 14-19Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 14 Summary
The platoon experiences its first encounter with the Taurans. Cortez orders everyone to take cover; an enemy ship is spotted overhead. The vessel, resembling “a broomstick surrounded by a dirty soap bubble” (63), carries a single Tauran, a creature whose physiology is strikingly non-human. It does not see them, however, and flies by without incident.
As they approach their objective, the enemy base, Captain Stott transmits an aerial image of the location to Cortez, who plans the attack with the platoon leaders. Nothing in the photograph suggests the presence of weapons, but they nevertheless assume they’re hidden in the base. “[Y]ou could hide a gigawatt laser in each of those huts” (65), Cortez warns. The plan is for the Earth’s Hope to detonate a fission bomb in the upper atmosphere to scramble the Taurans’s communications, after which the troops will begin the ground assault. Cortez reminds them to take one prisoner. When Potter corrects him—at least one—Cortez relieves her of her command position. As they prepare for the assault, Cortez informs them that if anyone has reservations about taking a Tauran life, “all of you have a post-hypnotic suggestion that I will trigger by a phrase, just before the battle. It will make your job easier” (68).
Chapter 15 Summary
As they reach their target, the assault begins, a chaos of explosions, blinding light, and grenade fire. Cortez triggers the post-hypnotic suggestion, and Mandella’s mind is filled with images of “shaggy hulks” committing atrocities against innocent human civilians. While his logical mind understands these images are pure fantasy, the mind control takes over, and “something was thirsting for alien blood” (71). All around him, bloodlust spreads among the soldiers, who grow giddy with the urge to kill. As they approach the base, Tauran defenses, laconic “bubbles” launched from the perimeter buildings, kill three soldiers. Taurans emerge from one of the buildings, and the soldiers engage with them. The Taurans outnumber the humans, but the Taurans, fleeing in the open with little cover, are easy prey: “It was slaughter” (74), Mandella observes. Eventually, a handful escape. The humans occupy the base, but they find little of practical use. With the battle over, Cortez deactivates the post-hypnotic suggestion. Surrounded by the carnage, Mandella hates the army and hates humanity but also wonders if their actions aren’t, in fact, undeniably human.
Chapter 16 Summary
Ten years later, now-Sergeant Mandella and Sub-major Stott discuss a morale problem aboard the ship. With a Tauran ship in pursuit and a scheduled landing on a portal planet, the soldiers are afraid, although no one wants to admit it. The company has been told they have days before the Tauran vessel reaches them, but new information suggests they may have only hours. Mandella orders his platoon into their “acceleration shells.” Mandella and Corporal Potter discuss the updated information, speculating on Tauran military capabilities as well as their new respective “sack” mates.
Chapter 17 Summary
The platoon climbs into the acceleration shells—flexible suits that equalize body pressure during acceleration—and the ship’s tactical computer takes over navigation and guidance. After the ship reaches acceleration, platoon leaders meet for a debriefing. The Taurans, they are told, launched a drone missile that reached a speed of “203 gravities,” faster than any human propulsion. Although the drone was destroyed, the technological advancement is troubling. Once the Tauran ship closes in, all personnel will climb into their acceleration shells again, let the computer engage in evasive maneuvers, and hope they are not outgunned.
Chapter 18 Summary
As the ship races to within 500 million kilometers of its target—the portal planet Yod-4—the soldiers climb into their acceleration shells and wait. Mandella considers the advantages and disadvantages of trusting their lives to a computer. If computers can be programmed to fight as well as humans, he reasons, then are human beings blank slates, simply programmable killing machines? Before he can resolve the inner debate, the pressure drops; disaster has been averted, at least temporarily.
Chapter 19 Summary
While dressing after depressurization, Mandella is ordered to check squad bay 3, Potter’s bay. Something has gone wrong; a delay in depressurization. He runs into the bay to find Potter, semi-conscious in her shell, covered in blood. While waiting for a medic, Mandella treats the wound as best he can. The doctor arrives and begins triage and treatment. Another doctor wanders over, and together, they prep Potter for surgery. Mandella stays by her side, and one of the doctors—Harmony—informs him that the ship was hit—four squad bays and an armor bay destroyed, no fighting suits left, and 30 casualties. Their mission has been canceled. While Mandella grieves over his lost comrades, he is called to an emergency briefing. He leaves Potter in the doctor’s hands and wanders through the acrid-smelling corridor.
Chapters 14-19 Analysis
In these chapters, Haldeman gives his audience their first glimpse of the Taurans. Their physical appearance, as physics and biology would dictate, is radically different from that of humans. A unique world with its own unique environmental conditions would likely produce life quite dissimilar from anything in the human imagination. Apart from the scientific reality of Tauran physiology—at least, a “reality” based on some scientifically accurate speculation—the stark differences between human and Tauran serve another purpose. The most effective way to dehumanize an enemy is to emphasize how unlike you they are. From different, it is only a small step to less than, and finally, to monstrous, and the most logical course of action when confronting a monster is to kill it. The army’s post-hypnotic suggestion planted into the minds of Mandella’s unit evokes images of Taurans “boarding a colonists’ vessel, eating babies while mothers watched in screaming terror” (70). Although the humans are the colonizers, intruding into Tauran space, Cortez pushes his troops to kill without mercy, to avenge the death of one of their own regardless of how many Taurans have been killed first. While the horrors of war seem unfathomable from a civilian perspective, the vulnerability of the human psyche to propaganda and manipulation makes those horrors easily within the reach of even the most empathetic soul.
As the narrative flash-forwards 20 years, Mandella is now a sergeant, although the physics of “time dilation” and multiple collapsar jumps creates a disparity between Mandella’s experience of time and the passage of time in the world around him: “Me a twenty-year man and only twenty-five years old” (84), he muses. Still a young man and close to retirement with a full pension, he has one final battle looming in his future, one more opportunity to die in the name of a cause he only vaguely understands. Mandella’s two-decade military career gives him perspective, experience, and a cynical eye toward authority, but it also allows his emotional side to reveal itself. With much of the new-grunt jitters long gone, Mandella has the psychological space to feel genuine affection. Early on, new recruits sack together as a matter of tradition and law, but those sexual encounters rarely extend beyond the physical. Mandella and his platoonmates swap partners without a second thought; it’s just sex after all, with no emotional attachments. Twenty years later, however, Mandella’s relationship with Margay Potter is deeper, more monogamous. When Potter is severely injured in an acceleration shell malfunction, Mandella’s fear and grief are palpable, more akin to that of a long-time partner than of a fleeting lover.
In fact, Mandella’s attachment to his entire squad is more deeply anchored. When a soldier dies in their first assault on a Tauran base, Mandella’s description is clinical and dispassionate. When thirty members of his unit die 20 years later, he lists names, ascribing his grief to individuals rather than nameless grunts in spacesuits. Some of this relaxed emotional stance is attributable simply to time spent with these people, but there’s more to it. Mandella, and likewise all his fellow service members, cannot afford to feel love when their bodies are so disposable. Only later, after the initial fear and trauma of war either wear off or becomes normalized, can they create an open space for another human being.
