31 pages • 1 hour read
Jim DeFeliceAmerican Sniper
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2012A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Prologue-Chapter 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Prologue Summary: Evil in the Crosshairs
American Sniper opens with a depiction of events that took place late in March of 2003. As a member of SEAL Team 3, Chris has been assigned to protect Marines as they move through a small Iraqi town; he is not yet a certified sniper, but his job for the time being is to spot and eliminate targets. The only people in sight are a woman and a few children, but it quickly becomes apparent that the woman has a grenade. Chris takes a shot and hits her, preventing her from attacking the troops. This would be his only kill that did not involve a male combatant.
Chris explains his duties in combat: it was up to him to protect other members of the American armed forces from their enemies in Iraq, enemies who had no regard for human life and were the embodiment of evil. Killing such ruthless enemies was necessary, but Chris is uncomfortable writing about his life. As a sniper, he registered approximately 160 kills, according to the official number; he credits many of these to factors such as good training and the opportunity to be in combat often, not to anything that made him “better” than other servicemen. He is no longer at war, as of the time of writing, though he would gladly return to serve. He intends American Sniper to serve as a story of manhood, duty, and even love.
Chapter 1 Summary: Bustin’ Broncs and Other Ways of Having Fun
The first full chapter of American Sniper is devoted primarily to Chris’s background before he joined the SEALs. He grew up in north-central Texas, the older of two sons in a traditional Christian family. Chris’s parents instilled in him the virtues of loyalty and hard work, and Chris’s upbringing—which involved hunting, ranching work, and regular contact with rifles and other guns—gave Chris affection for the outdoors. For a time, he fully embraced a “cowboy” lifestyle, enjoying a brief rodeo career, which was cut short by an injury.
Not especially interested in schoolwork, Chris was drawn to a career in the armed forces. In 1996, he stopped by a recruiting station; he was initially attracted to roles in the Marines and Special Forces, but found himself interested in the SEALs after talking with a navy recruiter. Unfortunately, Chris was initially disqualified from entering the navy because of his rodeo injury. He returned to a life of ranch work and made decent money, moving from Texas to Colorado and back again. Chris was given a second chance to become a SEAL around of the winter of 1997-1998. He immediately left ranching to embark upon this new path.
Chapter 2 Summary: Jackhammered
Chris devotes much of the second chapter to BUD/S, or Basic Underwater Demolition SEAL, the physically and psychologically demanding course that every aspiring SEAL most successfully complete. BUD/S involves water-based training and constant exercise, but its most demanding aspect is Hell Week, a period that puts prospective SEALs through intensive training while affording them little sleep. Motivated to succeed, Chris makes it through Hell Week. His graduation, unfortunately, is rolled back because of an infection.
At the same time that Chris is moving towards a career as a SEAL, he reaches a few personal milestones. Most importantly, he meets and falls in love with the woman whom he will eventually marry, Taya, who describes her life with Chris in a series of letters that appear throughout American Sniper. After a casual meeting at a bar, the two of them stay in touch and grow closer. Chris and Taya are sleeping in the same apartment on September 11, 2001; Chris gets in Taya’s SUV, races off, and reports for duty. It becomes increasingly obvious that Chris will be deployed in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, but before he is, he weds Taya and takes a brief period of honeymoon leave.
Chapter 3 Summary: Takedowns
Now a full-fledged SEAL, Chris is deployed on nautical missions known as Visit, Board, Search, and Seize (VBSS). He and his comrades are tasked with intercepting suspicious ships and finding weapons that are being transported into Iraq by way of the Persian Gulf—weapons that include Scud missiles. As the war effort intensifies, Chris is shifted to land-based missions, and is given the primary responsibility of manning an M-60 machine gun on desert patrol vehicles.
For the most part, Chris takes pride in these duties and is eager to get into combat. However, Taya reacts to the run-up to war with concern. She becomes especially worried after learning that Chris has been in multiple helicopter accidents, and her anxiety only escalates after she sees a report of yet another helicopter accident on the news. Though Taya expects the worst, Chris calls and confirms that he is safe. Taya is relieved, but stops watching the news after such a harrowing experience.
Prologue-Chapter 3 Analysis
As an autobiography that revolves around the intensity and drama of combat, American Sniper naturally faces a few narrative challenges. The first is to channel the on-the-ground intensity into a written format. In terms of depicting combat, narrative prose faces a few disadvantages compared to a medium such as film, which can rely less on reflection and more on visceral, surprising sequences in building a story. But Chris Kyle’s narrative style is itself designed to be visceral, sudden, and fast-paced. The short paragraphs and punchy sentences of American Sniper are well suited to capturing moments of tense action, such as the sniper scene that begins the autobiography, and to delivering Chris’s darkly humorous observations in an efficient manner.
American Sniper is more than the sum of its action scenes: it is also a pointed look into the psychology of the armed forces, from the bonds that Chris and his fellow SEALs form to the worldview behind successful combat. Writing—even writing that is less punchy in style than Chris Kyle’s—is ideally suited to such an examination. As Chris explains, for instance, “being a SEAL is more about mental toughness than physical prowess—if you have the psychological fortitude to come back from an injury and complete the program [BUD/S], you stand a decent chance of becoming a SEAL” (37).
The first few chapters explain how Chris, as a young man, developed some of his own reserves of mental toughness. The remainder of the narrative is primed to show exactly how he put such a mentality to use—and to play the excitement of combat against Chris’s thoughts and emotions.
The other challenge Chris Kyle faced in crafting American Sniper was a matter of coordination—of how to play the various aspects of his identity (father, husband, soldier, and eventually author and entrepreneur) against one another. Here, Taya’s entries became especially helpful. These short commentaries call attention to the tension between Chris’s life in the navy and his life among civilians. This tension shapes the structure of the autobiography. For instance, in the final scene of “Takedowns,” Chris phones Taya, and Taya finds that her “fear and relief came out as unintelligible sobs” (73) as she learns that her husband has survived another day of combat. Taya wants Chris safe and with his family; Chris wants to perform his duty as a SEAL. The roles are clear, and the difference in perspective and in desires between husband and wife will only intensify as Chris tells more of his own story.
