D.J. before they both shoot it and it darts off. Finally tracking the bear, Rusty steals his son's kill of the grizzly. The following morning Tex and D.J. wake up before the rest of the group and go into the wilderness without any supplies, in order to have a different, more enthralling experience with nature. Without a compass, sleeping bag, or defense except their wit and hands, they hike through the mountain range, observing the wonders of nature and stalking wild packs of animals. Even encountering a bear, they feel as close as brothers and are brought to a primal existence many only dream to obtain. The novel ends, knowing the two would be sent to Vietnam the following morning. Style Why Are We in Vietnam? employs an experimental style that joins vivid description, slang, obscenity, and hallucinogenic stream-of-consciousness. Its narrator D.J. ("Disc Jockey" or "Dr. Jekyll") plays with identity throughout the narrative: he switches from first- to third-person and also changes perspectives from a privileged teenager in Texas, to a crippled black man in Harlem. Each chapter ("Chap") is preceded by an "Intro Beep" that offers commentary on the events, and the narrative's time and place shift from the present, which is the night before D.J. and Tex ship out to Vietnam, to their trip to Alaska two years before the present in which the novel is set. Dearborn states that WWVN, while dealing with heavy issues, also illustrates Mailer's love of language—in the obscenity that, for Mailer, "expressed the humanity of America, as expressed in its humor". While it alludes to both Joyce's Ulysses and Burroughs' Naked Lunch, WWVN is fairly simple by comparison. Analysis Even though the Vietnam War is not mentioned until the last page of the novel, critical analyses concur that the novel itself is the implicit answer to the question the title poses: why is the US involved in military action in Vietnam? In her foreword to the 2017 release of WWVN, Maggie McKinley identifies dominant concerns in the novel: "corrupt capitalism, corporate elitism, American imperialism, and aggressive hyper-masculinity". These themes are realized through the technological superiority that allows the hunters to dominate and decimate the animals they hunt. This use of technology, opines Fulgham, reduces these hunters to the basest level and represents a "virulent, malignant evil". This bizarre bear hunt, like a retelling of Faulkner's classic "The Bear", becomes an extended metaphor