Children

Symbols are tricky things. Red can sometimes represent violence, and other times represent passion. Birds can sometimes represent freedom, and other times represent frailty.

But there's one symbol pretty much always means the same thing—probably because the idea of this symbol tugs on our heartstrings and makes us break out in a collective "Awwww." We're talking about children: pretty much everyone agrees that kiddos are universal representations of innocence, purity, and adorably pinch-able cheeks.

And that's no different in Sunrise Over Fallujah.

If there's anyone the soldiers feel especially sympathetic toward, it's the Iraqi children that they meet. From the moment Birdy joins another soldier in giving candy to children on the same street where a boy was shot, he feels guilty about the way the war is affecting them.

While the civilian adults in Iraq have learned to be wary of the American soldiers, many children walk right up to them. (Innocence: check.) The soldiers try to do what they can for them, like when Miller goes against orders to treat children who have been injured. After Ahmed helps dig a grave for a child who has died, Birdy thinks:

There was something that Ahmed knew that we all knew: The children belonged to all of us. It was a message the heart wanted to sing. (6.240)

He and his unit feel a responsibility for the children, and the way that they are affected by the war that the unit had a part in bringing.

But not everyone shares that feeling. Captain Roberts was involved in having Iraqi children kidnapped as part of a plot to get detonators. He feels the kidnapping is justified, because IEDs kill American soldiers.

But Jonesy ends up giving up his life for one of the kidnapped children. He's basically the opposite of Roberts. He sees all that innocence and purity as so important that it's worth protecting, even by putting himself in the line of fire. And, by giving his life for the ideals Birdy cares so much about, Jonesy is the closest this book has to a clear-cut good guy.