John Kerstetter's Essay 'Triage'

War is sacrifice. To be human is to sacrifice. When life is at stake, all strength is siphoned from hearts to act against the most powerful human intuitions-to protect loved ones from harm, survive to support them, and help those in need. One carries these instincts from inside a mother’s womb like the permanence of birth marks and wrinkles upon skin. Letters from World War II hold expressions of concern and sentiment, a delicate symbol of hardship for soldiers and their families back home. John Kerstetter’s essay “Triage” represents the emotional trauma that medical personnel undergo at war. “A Brief Encounter with the Enemy” follows a young soldier and his contradictory goals of acquiring glory and avoiding to face death when going off to war. War redefines what it means to be human by forcing out hidden capabilities of enduring, endearment and escaping gut instincts to face terror willingly. Leaving someone to die in a twisted mess of suffering is unfathomable. When one saves lives everyday, it takes a special amount of strength to ignore ones instincts and life duty to refrain from helping. Jon Kerstetter explains in his essay, “Triage,” that “It is the necessity of …show more content…
Kerstetter simplifies the bond between the death of this soldier and the emotional ramifications on his parents to something more technical, imagining the dying soldier’s leg separate from the soldier as a whole, then as a fetus, to the twinkle of an eye between two lovers-the soldier’s parents. Kerstetter weaves in and out of interconnected ideas of sympathy, concern and the resulting tension on his own self when facing wounded