The murder trial had stirred up his thinking on the war. Though he regretted his actions in the incident, he believed that they were the natural extension of the things they were taught and encouraged to do in the war. He was frustrated by military court’s refusal to consider factors of the war. It further inflamed his belief that the war had produced a spirit of brutality, which corrupted the moral condition of those who had engaged in it, and that the military command did not operate with intellectual consistency. A plane could bomb a village of civilians and somehow have it be treated as a legitimate war action, while foot soldiers encouraged to hunt down the enemy at all cost and getting civilians caught in the process was taboo. The legal manipulation of facts and narratives in the trials led him to believe that the military system cared little for truth and more about convenient images. By the time his trial was over, he was left with ambiguous feelings about himself, and a growing belief that the war was a corrupted enterprise. His negative views against the effectiveness of the war were cemented following …show more content…
This includes the loss of idealism and romanticism toward war and national service. He repeatedly makes note of gradual loss of idealism throughout the book. There is also a theme of corruption. In instances, such as the trail period, he makes mention of his belief that the conditions of the military operations served to corrupt the moral sensibilities of people, encouraged brutality, and weakened people’s sense of humanity. There is also the theme of religion, in which his experiences of death lead him to question his Catholic upbringing, make him skeptical about spirituality, and make him skeptical about the religious like fidelity he once felt toward the military. These themes in some form involve a sense of loss produced by turmoil of