62 pages • 2 hours read
Buzz WilliamsSpare Parts
Buzz WilliamsNonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2004A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Themes
Education
Williams’s first education is from Lenny and involves how to be a Marine. At boot camp, he is educated on what it means to be a Marine, and in combat he learns what it means to fight a war. Throughout the memoir, Williams is always trying to learn more, and to use that learning to teach. He worries that he and his fellow Marines have not been trained enough. He worries about the efficacy of training. As he goes to college and takes classes on teaching, he begins to teach. He is constantly striving to learn more, find better ways to train, and to bring his teaching experience into the Marine Corps.
As Williams graduates college and takes a teaching position, he begins to bring what he has learned from the Marines to teaching. He institutes the Young Marines program. He wears his uniform to school. His education, both in the Marine Corp and in college, help shape who he is, allowing him to educate other Marines, his students, and his children, in the same way Lenny taught him.
He is also educated about war. Before Desert Storm, he didn’t understand what it would mean; after the war, he realizes most people will never know what war is like. Williams’s book, then, is an education in itself, both in what it’s like to be a Marine, and what war is like.
Place, and a Lack of It
Although Williams eventually comes to accept who he is, during the memoir he is often out of place. He feels out of place in his own home after Lenny leaves. He feels out of place at school when the other kids pick on him.
When he joins the Marines, he feels out of place in training, because he’s a college student, and most other recruits are not. When he finishes training and goes back to college, he feels out of place as a civilian. On weekend drills, he feels out of place as the new person, and, since it will be a year before he can go to LAV school, he feels out of place around the veterans.
He is also out of place in the Middle East. He does not understand the culture, nor does he understand war. He is not used to the desert heat, or the sand, and often reflects on the discomforts of war, such as exhaustion and lack of food, and, later, the horrors that make him happy people back home do not have to see what he did.
Because of all this, Williams is often looking for a sense of belonging: “It was a sense of belonging I hoped to be a part of one day” (60). Williams is always trying to find a way to be a part of something. As a Marine Reservist, a “spare part,” he feels out of place in combat, and among the full-timers at Camp Upshur. Williams is always questioning his place, until he finally reconciles his place through teaching: in the Marine Corps, he becomes master gunner of his unit, and at his high school, he institutes the Young Marines program. His marriage of his civilian world and his Marine world help him find his own place.
Unlock all 62 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 8,800+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features: