In all wars, whether justifiable or not, whether there is a moral benefit or not, or whether unavoidable or not, there is always human suffering on all parties involved. A war affects everyone involved in the conflict either directly or indirectly. Frequently, the horrors of war directly affect noncombatant civilian populations surrounding the areas of military campaigns. Always, family units are indirectly affected by having family members in the Armed Services with the military volunteers or draftees returning in body bags or never returning. However, at the very least, for soldiers in the battlefields, directly involved in the hostilities, the suffering is usually physical, emotional, psychological, and frequently, death. For the men that do survive death, there is always a price to pay, which is a transformation from what they were before to what they unwillingly must or will become due to the pressures of the war.
Acknowledging this, I read Tim O’Brien’s noble, ” The Things They Carried,” in my first year and he came to Mason to speak. This noble is about a platoon of soldiers and their experiences and emotions brought by the controversial Vietnam War, shows how soldiers become desensitized to the death of others, and acquire an induced violent nature while also making an effective anti-Vietnam War statement.
