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| American sailor with the skull of a Japanese soldier during World War Two. Unknown photographer. |
Frankie feels sickened when she comes across an American soldier "wearing a necklace made of amputated fingers and ears strung on a leather cord"(200). These "trophies" were taken from the bodies of North Vietnamese soldiers.
Given that a soldier is authorized to kill the enemy, and that the enemy wants to kill him, why does it matter (or does it matter?) what a soldier does to the enemy's lifeless body after they have been killed?
Is harming a lifeless body worse than killing a living body?
Peyton Spahn
ReplyDelete"Given that a soldier is authorized to kill the enemy, and that the enemy wants to kill him, why does it matter (or does it matter?) what a soldier does to the enemy's lifeless body after they have been killed?"
Even though two different soldiers can be posed as "enemies", it still matters what the other soldier does to the other soldiers body after they die. How the soldier wears his enemy like a trophy around his neck expresses extreme brutality and loss of all humanity. It truly is a monstrous act to defile a body like that, and flaunt it like a prize. I do not agree with how the soldier above treated the body of his deceased enemy, however; I understand how war, especially one like the Vietnam War, and its brutal nature can drive one to lose their sense of humanity and become more in touch with a violent monstrous side within them because of a kill or be killed mentality all due to the incredibly traumatic events that a soldier would witness during any war. I can see how those events would cause the soldier to lose touch with reality and humanity, and morph them into more of a desensitized human.
"Is harming a lifeless body worse than killing a living body?"
Yes, I think that harming a lifeless body is worse than killing a living body. Even if it is your "enemy", to harm a lifeless body is the act of someone who has truly lost touch with humanity and is a complete monster like mentioned above.
I completely agree with your response to this question. I like how you provided reasons a soldier might do something like carry fingers around their neck. It gave an explanation as to why soldiers did certain things even if they were demoralizing. Do you think some soldiers went to war just to kill?
DeleteGiven that a soldier is authorized to kill the enemy, and that the enemy wants to kill him, why does it matter (or does it matter?) what a soldier does to the enemy's lifeless body after they have been killed?
ReplyDeleteMy personal belief is that a soldier is authorized and must kill an enemy, that is what has to be done, but doing things like mutilating the body or anything disrespectful to it is too much. That soldier is also doing what they have to do and there is no reason to do anything to the body after it is dead, especially something that could make it where the other side can't identify the body after, which wouldn't give their family what they deserve, which is to be able to bury and see them after they have died.
Is harming a lifeless body worse than killing a living body?
I'm not sure how I truly feel about this question, I guess it all depends. I would say it is 100% worse to harm a lifeless body if killing the person was necessary, but the harming of the body isn't. There isn't really a reason to harm a lifeless body or take "trophies" from it, it is honestly just sick and demented. I could think of many reasons why you would have to kill someone but not any for mutilating a corpse.
Question 1: I do no think it is right for a soldier to mutilate an enemy's body, especially after that enemy is deceased. I believe the dead should be respected and taking "trophies" is not only disrespectful, but horrific as well.
ReplyDeleteQuestion 2: I think it depends on the circumstance. In a war, I think it is worse to mutilate a dead enemy's body than it is to just kill them. However, I think cold-blooded murder is worse than mutilating a corpse.
Question one- Soldiers are trained to protect their country and to do what it takes to accomplish that mission, which inevitably means they will have to kill people who oppose them. However, killing in a war to complete a mission or in self-defense is a long way from corpse mutilation. In many cultures, even after death, a body is highly respected, so to cut away parts of the dead’s body is unnecessary and disrespectful to the dead.
ReplyDeleteQuestion two- Killing is a harsh word to use, and most of the time, context can change the outlook of the situation. People kill in defense of themselves or others, they kill for a mission, and some kill because they crave the violence. Mutilation of a body is not in defence, and it does not help complete a mission to protect America. Mutilation is a cruel way of degrading the bodies of the dead and is a sick trophy for the soldiers. So, in most cases, I would say mutilating a body is worse than just killing them.
.... Again Taylor Inselman here. :(
DeleteQuestion 1: I think it absolutely matters what happens to dead bodies. Once someone's dead it's even easier to treat them with respect so to not do so, or to desecrate a corpse, is an unspeakable sin in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteQuestion 2: I would say that harming a lifeless body isn't as bad a killing someone, because once someone's dead they're dead (for the most part) but if you kill someone that is taking a life out of this world. This is a hard question to answer tastefully but that's how I'd answer.
The original comment here is by me, Jackson Cook by the way.
DeleteIt does matter, there should still be a level of respect and reverence for the dead, even if they were an enemy. I also understand that to make it through war, we will dehumanize the opposite side to make it easier to succeed and win against them, but the men that they killed were still human, much like them; they were also fighting for their country. A way to show respect to them is to leave their body alone once they have been killed, and to not show that basic level of respect would be inhuman.
ReplyDeleteI think that there is something especially gruesome about tainting with a dead body, but I also think that when you die, your body is just a body rather than still you; the life that made you human is no longer there. It's still absolutely abhorrent to desecrate a body, but I don't know if I think that it is necessarily much worse than taking that life away. I concur that it would depend on why someone was killed to make it worse than harming a real body.
Given that a soldier is authorized to kill the enemy, and that the enemy wants to kill him, why does it matter (or does it matter?) what a soldier does to the enemy's lifeless body after they have been killed?
ReplyDeleteEven though the soldier is authorized to kill the enemy, the enemy is still a human being with their own thoughts and a family that loves them. There should be a level of respect when it comes to the dead and how their body is treated.
Is harming a lifeless body worse than killing a living body?
Yes, harming a lifeless body is worse than killing a living one. A lifeless body has no way to defend themselves, making the action of harming it ruthless. Anyone who believes harming a human who has already had their lived striped from them is okay has no empathy.
I completely agree with you on this, Olivia. It is a horrendous action to mutilate your fellow man after they have died. Those people had lived only a portion of a life that was cut short, and from a war much less. During times of war, people are forced to pick a side, and Vietnam was no different. Having your body mutilated simply for the crime of defending against an enemy during war doesn't even begin to justify body mutilation; nothing can. I'm sure some soldiers had no say in defending their villages during war. Many of the casualties during this war were actually civilians in villages. During the book, we read of multiple civilian bombings. Everyone in war is a person with a life that happened before the war. Their remains should be treated with respect.
ReplyDeleteGiven that a soldier is authorized to kill the enemy, and that the enemy wants to kill him, why does it matter (or does it matter?) what a soldier does to the enemy's lifeless body after they have been killed?
ReplyDeleteI think that it does matter. the enemy is still a human just like the person that killed him. That person probably had a family to go home to and that family wouldn't want something like that to happen to them. Even though you are fighting to kill and protect your country you should still have enough respect to leave the body alone after the fact.
Is harming a lifeless body worse than killing a living body?
Me personally I believe it is worse than killing. Everyone was going through an extremely traumatic time during the war, the soldiers, the people living in Vietnan, and the families of the soldiers. When someone is killed, they should leave them alone. A lifeless body has no way of defending itself. Everyone should be treated with respect especially someone's remains.
In times of war, people become so damaged mentally. This is displayed frequently throughout the book in many different forms. These men and women spent months, even years seeing horrific injuries, deaths, losing best friends, loved ones, etc. These are things that the human mind is not going to be able to comprehend. I believe that in times such as these, people most definitely lose their sense of reality. These soldiers begin losing their sense of reality with not ever getting to eat right, sleep comfortably, and other factors. Living with the understanding that you are supposed to kill the enemy, and vice versa, it could be easy for you to lose track of morals and decency. War goes far past these points.
ReplyDeleteWhen asked if Harming a lifeless body is worse than killing a living body, I would say yes. I do believe that it is upright inhumane to do so. However, these men may have seen worse before that point.
I believe this idea of mutilating corpses and using pieces of them as trophies says something about wars and the human psyche in general. I personally wouldn't mutilate a body because it was a person. I assume this man wouldn't do the same if his friend died, so that raises the question, in this man's mind what is the difference between his enemy and his friend. I believe that the reason this man finds it okay to mutilate his enemy's body is because in his mind his enemy is not human. When you kill a person it damages you mentally, a way many people get around that is by seeing their victims as less than human. For the man the mutilation of the corpses of his enemies is justified, not necessarily just because they are his enemies but because to him they aren't human, they killed his friend, captured and tortured him, and killed countless of his other friends. This attitude of dehumanizing people is a very dangerous one, this mindset has led to some of the most atrocious acts in history, Hitler didn't want to genocide the jews because he thought they were bad people, he wanted to wipe them out because in his mind they were less than people. Terrorists justify their actions by treating human beings as nothing more than numbers to prove a point. When we begin to dehumanize other people that is when we get monstrous actions like wearing severed human fingers as a trophy. I would say that harming a human body and murdering someone are not quite on the same level but both involve dehumanizing the life that you are butchering, past or present.
ReplyDeleteThis is by Brayden Benson
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