62 pages • 2 hours read
Spare Parts
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Symbols & Motifs
Yellow Footprints
Spare Parts begins and ends with footprints. In Lenny’s letters from boot camp, he described how scared he was standing on the yellow footprints all Marine recruits followed during training. Williams felt their call even then. For years, as Lenny completes training, as he visits home, as Williams grows older, he hears the call of the yellow footprints, which means he hears the call of the Marine Corps and following in his brother’s footsteps.
The subtitle of Spare Parts is“A Marine Reservist’s Journey From Campus to Combat in 38 Days.” Much of the book is about journey: the first journey follows the yellow footprints to the Marine Corps. After becoming a Marine, Lenny talks differently, walks differently, stares differently, and Williams imagines transforming himself as Lenny has. When Lenny visits home, he teaches Williams how to march, how to make his bed, how to wear his hair. He teaches Williams how to fight, and, after knocking down a bully, Williams gets his nickname “Buzz,” referring to his high and tight haircut: “That kid with the buzz cut can fight!” (xi).
But it’s after Lenny’s death that Williams begins to seriously think about following in his footsteps. When Big Ray, a former Marine at the gym where Williams works, reminds Williams of how far he has drifted from his childhood dream of joining the Marines, he goes to see the same recruiter Lenny had signed under. He re-reads Lenny’s letter, thinking of the yellow footprints calling to him.
A few weeks later, he is standing on the yellow footprints. His entire time in boot camp, Williams is trying to follow in Lenny’s footsteps, to transform himself into a Marine. After boot camp, his journey takes him to his reserves training, where he continues his Marine education. Williams does not acknowledge that, although he hasn’t forgotten Lenny, the Marines he serves with have become his brothers, so as he continues to live up to the standards of the Marine Corps, he is still trying to live up to the standards of his “brothers.”
The journey to become a Marine—not just a “spare part” but a Marine worthy of the name—comprises most of the book. As Williams continues his Marine education at Light Armored Vehicle (LAV) school, he is preparing for the most harrowing journey of all. All through boot camp and reserve training, he has been training to kill. As a Marine, it is his duty to prepare himself for war. Williams has not yet realized what war is—he has only been following an idea—but as Iraq invades Kuwait and the United States military begins gearing up for war, he realizes he will begin that journey soon.
The journey to war takes him to Saudi Arabia. There, he begins to see what becoming a Marine really means. He experiences hunger, boredom, exhaustion, and fear as the war creeps closer. When the war begins, he experiences the deaths of fellow Marines, and he experiences the prejudice that active-duty Marines hold against the “spare parts.” As his unit makes several mistakes—Moss sleeping, Nagel becoming irrational, friendly-fire casualties—Williams’s fear of not being properly trained resurfaces, which means he still fears not being a true Marine.
When Edsar is killed, Williams remembers Lenny, and “Taps,” and when Williams breaks his vow to Lenny to always think of his brother when “Taps” is played, he has completed his journey to become a Marine, because he realizes all Marines are his brothers. After rotating back to the rear, Williams sees himself as every bit a Marine as the active-duty Marines: he is battle-worn, dirty, exhausted, and sick, but he has performed well. This is exemplified when Morrison, the active-duty Marine Williams went to boot camp with, salutes Williams and his friends.
Williams also continues his journey after the war. By instituting a Young Marines program at his school, Williams is attempting to have others follow in his footsteps in the same way he followed Lenny. In the last lines of the book, Williams returns to the symbol of the yellow footprints, stating that if his children ever hear the call, he will be there to educate them, and to help them decide if it is a call they want to answer.
Gear
The title of Williams’s memoir refers to Marine Reservists as “spare parts.” Like the “spare parts,” they are nicknamed, Williams and the Marines he serves with are defined by their gear. Artillery crews are defined by artillery, tank crews are defined by their tanks, amphibious crews are defined by their amphibious vehicles. The men in Williams’s unit become angry, and their morale is lowered, when they can’t train with their LAVs. They know the importance of gear. When it doesn’t look like the LAVs will arrive in Saudi Arabia in time, Captain Cruz tells the men they will simply serve as an infantry unit, so without the LAVs—their gear—they are defined differently. They take on new roles and become different Marines.
In one of the earliest scenes, the recruits in training are forced to carry their footlockers as they run. They hold their footlockers above their heads for long periods of time. They are, metaphorically, already being taught how important their gear is, since their footlockers hold all their gear, and they are forced to carry it with them everywhere.
On weekend drills, Williams always arrives the night before, so he can organize his gear. When he ships off to war, he spends hours planning what he will take, packing and repacking several times. Later, he learns that this is a way he copes with his anxiety. After the war, he dreams of his gear failing—another sign of his anxiety. Without his gear, Williams realizes, he is unprepared, incompetent, and powerless.
In the desert, their gear keeps them alive. The bandannas, wraps, and goggles protect them from the sand, and their MOPP gear and gas masks protect them from nuclear, biological, and chemical attacks. Williams even spends 500 dollars of his own to make sure he has the right gear, reinforcing the idea written on the wall at Staff Sgt. Bader’s issue point: WITHOUT SUPPLY YOU WILL DIE.
Lenny’s Letters
Williams learns about the Marine Corps through Lenny’s letters, but the letters also have another meaning for Williams: they are, ultimately, what inspires him to write his memoir. As a child, he poured over Lenny’s letters any time he missed his brother, and as an adult, he begins to write his story like they are letters to his children, since he tells the reader that his book will be there to educate his children if the yellow footprints ever call.
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