Second Reading of Friendly Fire

After reading Friendly Fire for a second time, I realized that I had been wrong about the generalizations I made and the pro-war characteristics I had found. In my second reading, I observed new elements in the story, such as the specific target it had, which I didn’t notice in my previous reading.

This time, I decided to make an emphasis on the title, trying to relate it to the story in different ways. A Friendly Fire is when in war, there is an attack from part of the allies, being either accidental or intentional. When the military refers to a Friendly Fire, they use the term as a euphemism or double speak, trying to make their offenses into more agreeable terms, that will not sound as insulting and cruel as they really are. This can also be seen as an oxymoron, because this term contradicts itself in many ways, starting with its own name. In the story, Friendly Fire, the title may be applied in various parts of the text. The first one is found within a military context, “But when there was that fuss about the friendly-fire incident with the Danish soldiers, she fixated on the idea that Anthony had been involved in it, even though Roy insisted that he’d been nowhere near where it had happened.(Hadley) In this part of the story we encounter the thoughts that one of the characters has about her son in war. She hears about a Friendly Fire that occurs near to her son’s camp, and she is afraid that something has happened to him. For her, the term Friendly Fire, is the complete the opposite of its literal meaning, because it may be the cause of her son’s death. She sees that it is a doublespeak that the military is trying to impose on her, so she doesn’t feel that they have harmed the member of her family that is in war.

Further on in the story, I realized that the Friendly Fire that was being addressed earlier was not the only one that actually existed within the story. This time, it was not the military euphemism which was taking place, but the oxymoron that was so evident between the emotions of the characters, and what they pretended to be before everybody else in their life. These two women are hard working and positive within their jobs, always trying to appear that they are happy and satisfied with what they have in front of others. This is shown throughout the story in various ways, one of them being the flirtatious attitude of one of them towards the men for whom they are cleaning their toilets, which already makes it very contradicting. “It was better when the men were in. There was always the opportunity for a bit of a joke. He probably liked the sight of my backside better than my face, she thought when she got up to refill her bucket and caught sight of herself in the mirror above one of the sinks, a square of polished tin screwed onto the wall.”(Hadley) This woman tries to look confident before this strange man, approaching him though jokes and posses, but when he leaves, the reflection that she makes about her life and her current state, which is cleaning toilets, brings the apparent doublespeak that she was trying to make with herself and with the man to the floor, making her feel terrible once again. She realized that she can’t fool herself, and probably she can’t fool others, she is just a maid, just like a Friendly Fire isn’t as friendly as it sounds.