Sergeant X Chapter Summary

Stationed in Devon, England, and scheduled to arrive in London to be assigned to infantry for the D-Day invasions, Sergeant X, imprisoned by the effects of war, alienates himself from those around him. At the specialized pre-Invasion training course, X describes how when the sixty American enlisted men, “spoke to each other out of the line of duty, it was usually to ask somebody if he had any ink he wasn’t using,” and how after attending courses, “each of [them] went pretty much [their] own way,” (Salinger, 5). Despite spending an abundance of his time with the other American men training for D-Day, Sergeant X isolates himself from the rest of the soldiers in order to cope with the horrors of war. For X, his detachment from society prevents him from experiencing further loss in his life.
X recognizes how his loneliness is negatively impacting his life by causing him to detach himself from society. As Sergeant X begins to acknowledge his solitude, the young British girl named Esmé who X had first seen at choir practice approached him and stated that she, “purely came over because [she] thought [he] looked extremely lonely,” (Salinger, 11). Esmé’s ability to identify the loneliness present in Sergeant X’s life indicates a mutual understanding of the detrimental effects proposed by war. Understanding the psychological effects of warfare first hand, Esmé describes how her father, “was s- l- a- i- n in North Africa,” allowing her to empathize with X (Salinger, 12). Mentally scarred from his experiences at war, Sergeant X feels as if there no one understood what he went through resulting in X’s attempts at communication to fail. But with Esmé, it is