The Village Kate Wilhelm Analysis

World Peace- what a joke! Our world’s history revolves around destruction and War which is based simply on human nature and “survival”. Wars in history are caused by military and political conflicts which leads us to many wars such as World War II. By 1945, America has introduced the atomic bomb capable of ending life on earth as we know it. Many instances have almost led to this apocalypse, yet the closest has been the Cold War between the United States and Soviet Russia. What wars have proven to society is that they end with the death of millions of soldiers and about twice that number for innocent civilians. One author who challenges the aspect of war is Kate Wilhelm, a scholarly writer, wrote the story titled “The Village” which is fiction, …show more content…
For example, in “The Village”, it states that “He and Sergeant Durkins consulted a map and Humboldt swore at great length. “They’ve got us lost, the bastards. This fuckin road ain’t even on their fuckin’ map” (Wilhelm 63). Essentially, Sergeant Durkins is in command of a company who is supposed to be in Vietnam attacking a village with certain coordinates, yet they find themselves in an unknown location and attack this random village without question. Long story short, this battalion of soldiers under command of Colonel Durkins, attacked an unknown village and killed every single helpless soul that lived there. Throughout the text, it is evident that Durkins knows that there will be civilians there, yet he says “We clear the area” (Wilhelm 65) to his soldiers. In conclusion, the soldiers killed and raped hundreds of innocent people for no reason. Wilhelm uses this scenario to show how war leads to the misuse of power resulting in a massacre of innocent civilians. Another situation where soldiers acted ignorantly in war is in Tim O’Brien’s “How to Tell a True Story”. For example, O’Brien states that “They lose it. They got on the radio and report enemy movement- a whole army, they say- and they order up the firepower. All night long they just smoke those mountains” (O’Brien 71). In this quote, it depicts Colonel Sanders and five other soldiers who claim to have heard chamber music, a choir, and a cocktail party in the middle of the woods, dark as night, and order in six trillion dollars of firepower. O’Brien uses this quote to show how ignorance in war caused a waste of military resources that Sanders had ordered up to attack no one. Sanders’ situation, in light of Wilhelm’s situation, are similar in the way that both the Colonel and Sergeant didn’t know what they were dealing