Unseen Impacts of War

Often times people will go into a war headstrong, determined to destroy the enemy and not think about the aftermath that war can leave.  When one is attacked or threatened they automatically go into defensive mode, which can cause them to be very selfish and almost savage like in order to protect themselves.  Although this is human nature for us to react like this, it is not always the best way to react.  People look at a country as a whole and deem everyone from that country as an enemy simply based on the decisions of the leaders that most of the people living in that country had nothing to do with.  In Slaughterhouse Five, this is issue is presented throughout the parts of the novel where Billy travels to his times in the war.  The readers can see that obviously Dresden has been hit devastatingly by the war, and it is not even over and it will continue to be destroyed.  People do not realize that when they bomb or take over cities that they also have innocent families and children living in them just trying to survive the war like every other family.  Also, the torture that families with a parent or sibling in the service is never put into their minds.  My father was in the Navy when I was little, and although I do not remember a lot of it I can imagine how difficult it must have been for my mom not to have my dad there.  In Slaughterhouse Five, we see that Mary is distraught in the same way because being a mother she always sees her children as babies and for her to imagine her baby going and killing another mother’s baby is too much for her to bear.  In my French class we have been watching a movie called Au Revoir Les Enfants (Goodbye Children), which is about a Catholic Boys’ School in Northern France that is occupied by Germany during WWII.  They boys do not have any running water to drink or shower with, no heat in the middle of winter, not enough food to eat, and do not know where their parents are because most of them have been taken by the Germans (and I won’t even get into how they are also harboring Jewish boys from the Nazis).  No one bothers to think of what these completely innocent boys must be going through when they enter into war.  Personally I do not think that war is necessary and I think that it is also selfish and that when people enter war they do not think of all the little people and things that will also destroyed.  They can only see the big picture of winning the war and proving their superiority.  Also, I feel that being a female and having maternal feelings I can empathize with the innocent people continually destroyed by war.