THE PRICE OF VALOR
Quotations
“Debbie said, “That was the first time I heard him
say stuff about seeing people’s brains blown out.
Other times, he just has flashbacks—like, he sits
still and stares.” Carl laughed again. “Really,
though, I’m fine,” he said. Beside him in the booth,
Debbie shook her head without taking her eyes
from mine and exaggeratedly mouthed, “Not fine.
Not fine.”
“I spent a week in December among amputees at
Walter Reed Army Medical Center, in
Washington, D.C., and was struck by how easily
they could tell the stories of the horrible things that
had happened to them. They could talk about
having their arms or legs blown off in vivid detail,
and even joke about it, but, as soon as the subject
changed to the killing they’d done, a pall would
settle over them.”
“We’re going to use a dirty, nasty four-letter word
you’ll hardly ever hear,” he told a roomful of burly
agents. “If you’re truly ready to kill, you’ll be
better able to avoid panic, better able to deter your
opponent, and better able to live with it afterward.”
A soldier traumatized by the killing he has done is
a casualty, he said, but such casualties can be
avoided if soldiers are taught, mentally, to confront
the act of killing.”
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- doing. All and all, there is no good way to do
“To win wars, the Army must turn soldiers,
momentarily, into reflexive, robotic killers. But, as
a volunteer force dependent on the good will of the
public, it cannot send home generation after
generation of combat-traumatized veterans.”
Comments
This is potentially a lot like Odysseus.
Odysseus has been at war and sea for many
years and has experienced many traumatic
events. Odysseus is undoubtedly coming home
a changed man. This, once again, reinforces the
fact that after being gone people change. In the
Odyssey we see how the people at home
(mother dying, suitors coming, etc.) change
were in the article it really focuses on how the
soldier changes.
The soldier’s don’t forget their past and the
things that they have done. It seems as though
the soldiers feel very guilty about their killings.
Although they suffered many physical wounds
themselves, the real thing that is ‘eating them
up’ and bothering them is the harm that they
have caused others. It seems almost selfless
how the soldiers care more about what they
have done to others then the pain and suffering
that they have received. I wonder if the soldiers
ever regret doing what they did. Also, the
soldiers are the opposite of Odysseus.
Odysseus brags about the harm that he has
caused people; like when he arrogantly told the
Cyclopes that it was Odysseus who blinded
him.
This seems like the opposite of what we have
always been taught: “to confront the act of
killing” seems like an awful thing to do. “I
want that reflexive killing,” a captain wrote to
Kilner” The army process seems like a
somewhat awful thing. Making the soldiers kill
and having to deal with the after effects. They
say that they “cannot send home generation
after generation of combat-traumatized
veterans.” But that is exactly what they are
it; people will be hurt physically and mentally
but it has to be done and there is nothing that
we can do about it. Finally, a “robotic killer”
perfectly describes Odysseus. When he was
talking to Kirk, she even asked him if he must
always think about war and killing. It just once
again shows how our culture has changed.