U.S. Independence Day

U.S. Independence Day is the setting for a tense evening in which a national celebration provides noise and distraction for the narrator and Bon as they wait for the crapulent major. Fireworks, a staged visit, and a birthday toast give the scene a surface of ordinary festivity, but its closing image turns that surface into an encounter with guilt.

The Holiday as Setting

By seven thirty the next evening, the narrator and Bon are parked near a gas station in UCLA sweatshirts and caps, hoping to pass as students. The narrator’s car carries stolen license plates, while its legitimate plates are hidden in the glove compartment. The holiday matters not only as a date but as an environment of competing sounds: a city fireworks show, occasional gunfire, and nearby illegal fireworks create a din that the narrator has anticipated and hopes will draw attention away from them.

The celebration marks the United States’ bicentennial. Television specials and public commentary present the nation as recovered from recent foreign excursions and ready to resume its strength. Against that triumphant account, the narrator and Bon’s concealed purpose places private violence inside the holiday’s public display of national pride.

Celebration as Cover

The noise becomes part of the pair’s plan. After the firecrackers stop, the narrator reassures Bon that a single shot will not bring anyone outside to investigate. The passage thus links the holiday’s celebration to the possibility of an unobserved gunshot without showing the act itself. Bon waits tensely, while the narrator relies on the disorder of the evening as protection.

Later, the crapulent major appears at his carport carrying a lunch box and asks what the narrator is doing there. The narrator offers a plastic bag as an explanation for the visit. A glass of rye follows; after its medicinal taste, the men drink again while watching television coverage of the bicentennial. The ordinary gestures of a drop-in visit and a birthday toast conceal the threat that has shaped the evening.

Aftermath and the Major’s Third Eye

After the drinks, the narrator and Bon eat three oranges and go to bed. The narrator lies on his bunk and tries to close his eyes, but the effort does not shut out the image that follows him: the crapulent major’s third eye, which appears to weep at what it can see about the narrator. The holiday’s celebratory noise has offered cover, but it has not provided escape from the narrator’s awareness of himself.

That final image gives the evening its inward consequence. The major’s third eye functions as an accusing witness in the narrator’s thoughts, reversing the practical calculation that the gunshot could disappear into the fireworks. The national birthday is therefore framed by a contrast between public claims of renewed strength and the narrator’s private, unresolved reckoning.