Rating: 
Summary: Good story, inexplicable behavior
Review: The three soldiers to whom the title refers are Dan Fuselli, a working class Italian-American from San Francisco, "Chris" Chrisfield, an Indiana farm-boy, and John Andrews, from New York, the novel's main protagonist. All three went into the U.S. Army during the first world war and met during basic training. While Fuselli's big dream is to become a corporal and Chris just wants to get to the front to kill German soldiers, Andrews wants to become an accomplished musician and composer. Andrews is by no means a coward and does not shirk combat, but after the armistice is declared he has great difficulty taking orders from his superiors. As Andrews tells his French girlfriend, "every order shouted at me, every new humiliation before the authorities, was as great an agony to me." Andrews had managed to get permission from an officer for a School Detachment, which meant that he would be allowed to study music. He, instead, proceeds in a series of inexplicable misbehaviors to throw it all away.
_Three Soldiers_ is a colorfully written and probably fairly accurate study of various men's reactions to military life and the kind of discipline and regimentation inherent in that type of life. While many found it difficult to adjust to what they saw as a form of slavery, some of these soldiers chose to desert, believing they could eventually blend in with the civilian population on the European continent. Finding a French woman to marry seemed an easy solution. John Andrews was an intelligent, sensitive, well-educated and sophisticated young man. He even spoke French fluently. That he so capriciously chose the path that he did made absolutely no sense to me at all in this otherwise gripping and likable novel.
Rating:
Summary: Not as much about war as the title would have you believe...
Review: This book is not so much about the First World War(most of the book takes place after the armistice) as about the boredom that is inflicted on soldiers to make them a unit. Even that isn't given in explicit detail, and without this level of detail the rest of the book just falls flat. Also this book has many footnotes which unfortunately are included at the back of the book instead of at the bottom of each page. It makes for continual flipping back and forth and a most irritating reading experience.
Rating:
Summary: Not as much about war as the title would have you believe...
Review: This book is not so much about the First World War(most of the book takes place after the armistice) as about the boredom that is inflicted on soldiers to make them a unit. Even that isn't given in explicit detail, and without this level of detail the rest of the book just falls flat. Also this book has many footnotes which unfortunately are included at the back of the book instead of at the bottom of each page. It makes for continual flipping back and forth and a most irritating reading experience.
Rating: 
Summary: Allmost as good as U.S.A!
Review: THIS IS ONE OF THE GREATEST ANTI-WW1 BOOKS EVER MADE. A FAREWELL TO ARMS ( BY ERNEST HEMINGWAY) AND THE ENORMOUS ROOM (BY E.E. CUMMINGS) ARE A COUPLE OTHERS.
Rating:
Summary: Dos Passos chronicles the ultimate American experience
Review: Three Soldiers was the the first book by Dos Passos that I ever read. I had never really read anything about history, especially about war, because none of it ever really sunk in; it just went through one ear and out the other, because it was a subject so foreign, dull, and unapproachable to me. Three Soldiers, though, is written in such a way that the reader cannot help but to comprehend everything going on in the action. The characters are surprisingly real, the speech is authentic, and the imagery and description Dos Passos uses to communicate with the reader are vivid and very effective. By actually paying attention to his 'directions' for imagining a scene, VERY often through the the use of color, I could actually see in my mind just what Dos Passos wanted the reader to see, or so I feel. Now I am a huge fan of this little-known American writer. Three Soldiers turned this history-hating reader into an all-out history buff. He actually teaches the reader while entertaining them, instead of spitting out dry facts that turn people off to history. Three Soldiers is, in my opinion, the ultimate chronicle of soldier-life in WW1.
Rating: 
Summary: Highly symbolic treatise on individualism
Review: To read this novel as a war novel is a mistake. World War I is mearly the canvas upon which Dos Passos paints his story. If individuals have a responsibility to their government, what responsibility does that same individual have to his/her own conscience? "Three Soldiers" attempts to answer this question. As with most great works of literature, the story can be read on two levels.
At the surface you have the stories of three men with different desires of who and what they want to be. There is a theme of Socialism and anti-war here as well. It's a good story at the surface level. What makes this novel great, however, is that there is an underlying message here, wrought with symbolism. It's the study of the awakening of the individual and the choices he (John Andrews) makes. It's a study of moral courage in the face of insurmountable odds.
John Andrews (the central character) initially joins the army out of a sense of duty, then begins to recognize how he has been stripped of all who he was and has begun to conform to the "machine" of society. Disgusted, he takes his first tentative steps back toward who he really is at heart. The moment of epiphany comes when, after having been wounded and waking up in a make-shift hospital surrounded by busts of great men of the past, he decides that he must make his stand to change the world in what ever way he can just like the men represented in the busts above him did. His choices eventually drive him to desert the army while in Paris. The real choice comes near the end of the novel when he is presented the opportunity to return to the army with no consequence to his prior desertion. (I won't ruin the ending for you!)
There is a strong element of socialist propoganda in the novel. I am no more a socialist than I am a horse, but the reader should remember that this novel was written before the failings of socialism were widely known. It was a much more idealisic time and the evils and harshness of socialism had yet to be realized. The socialist element of the novel need not deter the reader from the true message: the courage and triumph of individual freedom.
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