Analysis Of Joe Haldeman's The Forever War

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Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War tells the story of William Mandella a former Vietnam Veteran that was drafted into the “Forever War”. Him and Millions of other soldiers were taught to kill these aliens called Taurans because they supposively killed humans and did many other horrible things to them for no reason and of course wanted to take over earth. With Mandella learning this and more about the enemy before he goes to base camp on an ice planet. When in training, he begins to learn that the battle gear they use is very dangerous if you don’t know how to use it. Many die from the use of the suit in training and thousands more die in the actual war. After hundreds of collapsar jumps and over500 years of war Mandella finds out that the war …show more content…

Mandella in Forever War had the chance to escape the war for a small amount of time and when he came back to earth it was nothing like anything anyone has seen. You couldn’t go anywhere without anyone or a gun. Money was replaced with calories and everywhere you go cities and land are trashed. This relates to the Psychological Effects of the Vietnam War written by Josh Hochgesang. this relates to the part of his article recalling the Vietnam Veterans post war. When Vietnam Veterans returned home, they were not welcomed back and the same happened in the book. There was no welcome home party or parade for the people in the book or the real life Vietnam veterans. The Veterans felt like no one understood the horror that they went through Veterans at the time developed PTSD and started doing drugs. “The drugs and alcohol usually seemed to be consumed for one of two reasons always. The soldiers were either using them casually in their leisure time for pleasure, or are more actively employing them to drown their sorrows and stresses from the war (Hochgesang P#37). This falls into Russell’s Article where he talks about when choices in war a thought about think about how it would affect your military as much as you would think about it affecting the enemy. For example Vietnam Veterans were still growing when they were called to fight. not of them were 18 when they joined and they saw some things extremely graphic.and deadly. many of them were still horrified by war and had no one else to talk to about it because no one understood them. These are things that the Government should have taken into consideration before sending as many 18 year olds as they could get to Vietnam. cause the loss of 58,000 American

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