Prayer In The Furnace Analysis

In “Prayer in the Furnace,” Phil Klay demonstrates the cruelty of war times, and the severe consequences it has on its Marines. The war is so appalling that it leaves the Marines barely able to sleep due to nightmares, they have thoughts of suicide, and they are hardly alive due to the substandard state of their health. Rodriguez, a Marine, talks to a chaplain about the issues that he has. He “pulled a plastic sandwich bag full of little pills out of his cargo pockets and held it at eye level. ‘How do you think any of us sleep?’” (Klay 137). Rodriquez is implying to the chaplain that due to the lack of sleep, the Marines rely on pills that help them sleep. Again, he mentions, “‘I don’t sleep no more,’ he said. ‘Hardly ever’” (153). The Marines can not properly rest due to constant perturbation of being killed at any moment. Moreover, erratic behavior is directly seen though the description of a lance corporal from Rodriquez's platoon. Due to the loss of two of his friends six weeks ago, “he’d been having mood swings, angry outbursts. He’d been punching walls, finding it impossible to sleep unless he quadrupled

Their health is so poor that Marines who see their fellow soldiers suffering agree that their death was “a good thing” (162). An example of this is seen in Jason Peters. He “was missing both hands and one leg. the IED had burned off his eyelids, so he had goggles on that misted his eyes every few seconds. His body was in a mesh, his kidneys had failed, he couldn’t breathe on his own, and he went through constant fevers” (162). Simply, through the state of Peter's conditions, one can assume the cruel, brutal, and gruesome results of the war on individual Marines. Furthermore, the war leaves the soldiers with little to no humanity left in them. A soldier mentions, “I wanted to shoot every Iraqi I saw, every day” (164-165). The war is simply gruesome and leaves the soldiers almost