Ethical vs. Logical

“Pi Ying said that this fight against death was no different, philosophically, from what all of them...had known in battle. In a cold way, it was true--no different, philosophically” (Vonnegut 91). Pi Ying has proposed a chess game that would risk the lives of all of those involved in it. The King makes every move, each could hold hidden dangers that only the King can see. The emotional weight of that decision is a burden that a civilian cannot understand until they are exposed to that process. In “All the King’s Horses” by Kurt Vonnegut, Colonel Kelly and 15 others are trapped in a pseudo-chess game with a powerful Asian warlord, Pi Ying. He requests for the game to be played with the prisoners of war as chess pieces. The idea contrasts with expendability as Colonel Kelly is able to justify sacrificing his son for the greater good of the game by forcing himself to deny his own humanity. He must become machine-like in order to make these mechanical, logical decisions. However, the women involved in the game have violent emotional reactions to this incident because the human cost of war is not truly understood unless it is personal. Pi Ying has attended this game with a woman who, when told of the events about to occur, stabs him and then herself. That action is quickly forgotten when Major Barzov takes over the game, but he cannot take the same risk of killing American citizens. Since he cannot kill anyone, when he loses the game, he allows the remaining prisoners to escape. The idea of a woman’s role in politics and her power in that society as weaker than a man’s is clear in this circumstance. Colonel Kelly is seen as the foremost authority on any decision making as the man. His risks are allowed and celebrated finally. Pi Ying’...

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...display how the average citizen would see war for the first time. Colonel Kelly sees her as “vacant and almost idiotic. She had taken refuge in deaf, blind, unfeeling shock” (Vonnegut 100). To a citizen who even understands the war process, war is still heinous and dubiously justified when viewed first hand. The man who seems to have coldly just given away her son’s life without the same instinct as her has participated in this heinous wartime atrocity for so long, but it only affect her now because she cannot conceive of the reality of it until it is personally in front of her. That indicates a less complete political education of war even among those who war may have affected their entire lives. The closeness and the casualties of this “game” will affect her the most because she has to watch every move that previously could have been kept impartial and unviewed.