Chapter 6 Big Idea

Chapter 6 Big Idea

I can only imagine what truly being in a war is like. We’ve all seen those movie with the major war scenes. One or two people will get slaughtered in a matter of seconds and the director does a fantastic job of making it look so real and lifelike. Now imagine that its real life, not just a movie and that those people did actually just die right before your eyes. Not as pleasant right?
       Even my most vivid and gruesome thoughts of war are nothing compared to the real and true thing. Yet teenagers are running around a battlefield taking the lives of others. The main idea of what i'm trying to get to is that these mere children are buried under a wave of pressure to join in on this horrible misfortune called war. They have but no choice to join in after being lectured by every close person in their life because if they don't they will be nothing but a coward in the eyes of those they love.
       So what is that these young adolescents are having their lives ruined for them before they have even had a chance to live it. What the poor youth become is what tugs on my heart the most. On page 113 a passage says “We have become wild beasts. We do not fight, we defend ourselves against annihilation. It is not against men that we fling our bombs, what do we know of men in this moment when Death is hunting us down- now for the first time in three days we can see his face, now for the first time in three days we can oppose him; we feel a mad anger.”  I love how death is capitalized as if it is a proper noun, as if it was truly a real person coming to get them from their miserable lives.
      War does a toll on the body. Not only in a physical way, but in a mental way as well. If you're lucky enough to survive long enough to get home what do you suppose you would do when you got there? You haven't learned the skills you will need to score a job. You haven't had the time to pursue your real dreams. These boys have lost hope for when they go home, because the war has ruined even home itself for them too.