2003

2003 is a point of convergence between private uncertainty and the violence of the narrator’s military world. The date marks a time when the narrator repeatedly revisits troubling thoughts about love and bad advice, even as events seem to be drawing toward an ending; elsewhere, it situates the reputation of Sergeant Major Greene, a former New York City police officer who joined the Army after September 11.

A Personal Turning Point

The narrator recalls that thinking about the past was upsetting, yet the thoughts returned. One example was an earlier belief that a person should always be in love with a woman, a belief the narrator associates with having received a great deal of bad advice. The recollection places 2003 amid a sense that circumstances were reaching their conclusion, without specifying exactly what was ending.

Greene’s Reputation

The same year anchors what was said about Sergeant Major Greene: that he had killed fifteen people in 2003. A former NYPD officer, Greene had enlisted after September 11. The narrator’s terse assessment that Greene was not pretending distinguishes him from the broader idea of performing a military role, while leaving the details and circumstances behind the reported deaths unstated.

The Date’s Narrative Function

The year does not resolve the narrator’s personal uncertainty or explain Greene’s actions. Instead, it places separate kinds of recollection side by side: an intimate reassessment of received ideas about love and a soldier’s stark wartime reputation. Its significance lies in this contrast and in the narrator’s sense that an ending was approaching, even as troubling memories continued to recur.