Textual analysis - Essay Example

In Chapters I-6 in Section IV, the topic of discussion was filled with the idea of how the soldier should distance himself from the enemy so that he will not hesitate to kill. This topic in turn affected how Grossman wrote the book as spoke about killing casually and objectively just like his argument s in the book. For example, he talked about the predisposition of a killer as a matter of fact to the point of being casual. In this instance, he hid under the blanket of studies to make the discussion impersonal and seemingly objective and achieve an emotional distance that enabled his book to carry the argument of Ben Shalit saying; “To me they were less than animals”.

Increasing the distance between the combatants – whether by emphasizing their differences or by increasing the chain of responsibility between the aggressor and his victim allows for an increase in the degree of aggression – Ben Shalit. There are also several concepts in the book that have affected Grossman’s writing style to be distant and detached. These concepts are authority or the proximity and intensity of a demanding leader to the subject that is viewed legitimately makes an individual or soldier operational to kill.

Next is through the group absolution whereby the individual feel less guilty to kill when a legitimate group has a support for the kill. The distance of the victim of which Grossman has inadvertently adopted in the writing style of the book which fell under two categories of moral distance and mechanical distance. Moral distance is the vilification of the enemy that justifies vindictive action while mechanical distance reduces the act of killing to a sterile video game, thermal sight, sniper sight or other kind of mechanical buffer that detaches the killer from his victim.

In the same manner that he talked about killing as a distant and unemotional thing as best