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Summary Of On Killing By Dave Grossman

1776 Words8 Pages

On Killing by Dave Grossman is not your everyday pick up a book and read by the lake type of novel. On Killing is a novel where you will find yourself having mixed emotions, some believe this book is horrible and violent, but others believe this novel is eye-opening and impacts them to learn the psychological ways on the basics on how and why soldiers kill humans. The main theme is “killology” which is the psychological study Grossman came up with about the idea of how humans are capable of killing other humans and how they may cope with it. I would not only recommend this book to military members, but to everyone in society. Everyone should learn about the hard truths and not just assume soldiers are harsh and just killing machines, but they …show more content…

Surprisingly this book was written to explain a startling fact that throughout most of our military history; up until the end of World War II, the vast majority of soldiers (between 75 and 95%) have refused to kill during combat. Lt.Col Grossman wrote this novel in a sensitive tone in order to get his point across without truly offending those who read his book and do not agree with his point of views and the horrifying thing of war and killing. While reading this book you can tell another military member is the author do to the true understanding and the compassion he has while talking about other military members and what they go through while having to kill.
While this book does express Marine Corps principles such as, “make sound and timely decisions, and train your Marines as a team” it also provides poor examples of leadership traits such as courage, loyalty, and dependability. During training for combat Marines are taught as a team to search and asses the area, and how to use the buddy system and never leave anyone behind. Also, a bunch of training is repetitive not to discourage a Marine and their ability to learn, but to imbed into their minds what to do when they are scared and …show more content…

You may think you are ready and with all the adrenaline running through your body you would be able to pull the trigger knowing if you didn’t they would, but still the emotions humans have and the subconscious mind 95% of the time you’ll feel remorse and sense of regret. Grossman talked about the civil war when soldiers were resorting to a number of options, anything that meant that they didn’t have to kill. Some fell back to support positions, some faked injuries or ran away, and many just fired into the air hoping it wouldn’t hit anyone with them knowing it. The battle of Gettysburg is one of the bloodiest and gruesome battles in our history, but as Grossman explains it could have been a whole lot bloodier. Estimates suggested during that time of war a group of men; averaging from 200-1000, firing from a range of thirty yards, would only hit one or two men a minute. Taking these estimates a 200 man group shooting only once per minute with a 25% accuracy should expect to see about 50 hits. More than 25 times that which was

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