The Repercussions of the Contradictions of War

O’Brien depicts several experiences from wartime, and the events that transpire during this time seem to have to moral reasoning, they simply occur. O’Brien describes an incident with his friend Rat Kiley who saw his friend Curt Lemon die in a rather brutal fashion. Curt was accidentally killed when he and Rat were playing with a grenade. O’Brien and another soldier Norman Bowker were asked to take down his remains from the tree Curt’s body was hanging from. O’Brien and his fellow soldiers are left to rattle with this horrific and seemingly purposeless event of war. O’Brien describes Curt’s death as happening very quickly, and that there was still happiness in his eyes right before he died. In an instant Curt’s life was ended, and it is up to the soldiers to rattle with this juxtaposition between Curt happiness in the moments before he died, and the grotesque nature of his death.

            It is in contradictions such as this that we can see the amoral nature of war. The hand grenade was a brief moment of joy for Rat and Curt, but in an instant turned into a deadly and horrible incident. In wartime, there is no moral justice, and the death of his friend weighs on Rat even though he knows he must continue onward. He attempts to cope with this traumatic event by slowly killing a water buffalo, and although this action may not make sense to us, Rat was likely trying to fill up the void created by the death of his comrade. When a soldier such as Rat returns to peacetime in the United States after the war, he will be returning to a society where he know longer fits in, his experiences cannot every truly be understood by his peers. He will be dealing with Post traumatic Stress Disorder. The seemingly moral less nature of wartime, and the ways in which soldiers like Rat coped with it no longer exist in peacetime at home. The traumatic events that soldiers experienced will forever haunt them back at home, as they will be reminded of them but not be able to cope or attempt to fill any voids like in wartime.