The Lingering Effects of War Anonymous 11th Grade

In Redeployment, Phil Klay reveals the vulgar, brutal aspects of warfare behind the victories and heroism that are often shown in media. Through several short stories, Klay shares the difficult course that soldiers undergo with reconciling with their war experiences when they return home. Soldiers return from war having seen incidents so abominable that it makes many question if it is possible to maintain a sense of morality in war. In “Psychological Operations” and “Prayer in the Furnace,” warfare creates a blind hatred within soldiers, leaving them with lingering aggression and suffering that they cannot overcome. In “Psychological Operations” and “Prayer in the Furnace,” Klay suggests that a successful soldier cultivates blind hatred and devalues human life. Through all of the brutal and inhumane incidents that soldiers experience, they become numb to the value of a human life over time.

In “Psychological Operations,” the protagonist, Waguih, tells an offensive and alarming story about the war as if it were ordinary. “The Marines, they’d compete to find the dirtiest insults they could think of. And then we’d go scream over the loudspeakers, taunting holed-up insurgents until they’d come running out of the mosques, all mad...