Born on the Fourth of July

Kovic’s birthday is the Fourth of July. He writes that everything began for him with his birthday and that it “was a proud day to be born on” (61). The fact that he shares a birthday with America makes him feel more patriotic and makes him feel a special kinship with the country, leading him to become a Marine. In the America Kovic grew up in, he celebrated the typical American heroes of professional baseball players and John Wayne, while also embracing President Kennedy’s call to serve his country. In answering that call, Kovic learns that the America he admired either no longer exists or, perhaps, never existed.

Because his career as an antiwar activist leads some Americans to label him a traitor, Kovic seems even more determined to remind the reader that he is a patriot. Given that goal, the significance of sharing a birthday with the United States becomes even more pronounced. He seems to argue that a person so proud of being born on the Fourth of July could not be a traitor to the USA. However, he also seems to imply that to celebrate America is to celebrate a nation that breeds killers through propaganda and war movies and that being born on the Fourth of July means sharing a birthday with a nation that has caused harm to the world.