They plodded along slowly, dumbly, leaning forward against the heat, unthinking, all blood and bone, simple grunts…no volition, no will, because it was automatic, it was anatomy, and the war was entirely a matter of posture and carriage…a dullness of desire and intellect and conscience and hope and human sensibility. Their principles were in their feet.
-The Things They Carried, p 14
As I read this passage, it struck me how mindless and animalistic the soldiers seem. O’Brien describes them having a “dullness” about them, even a dullness of “human sensibility.” With descriptions like these, the company does not seem to be fully human. Yes, they may appear to be human; their “anatomy” is completely normal. Yet psychologically, they were anything but human. Slowly but surely, they begin to lose their sense of who they are. They begin to lose human emotion and replace it with simple, physical motion. As they march on, they lose their “conscience and hope.” They lose themselves.
it's almost as if they're brain-dead
ReplyDelete