The dictionary definition for dehumanization is said to be the denial of positive human traits and characteristics or the "humanness" people have. In The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, dehumanization plays a huge role in soldiers lives for them to live with themselves after killing people just like them, fighters for their country. It is a need for them to dehumanize their enemy. Living with the facts that they have murdered people is too much, so they have to completely and thoroughly believe they have killed and stopped the enemy to make it bearable. They live these lives already with so much emotional baggage, carrying “grief, terror, love, longing--these were the intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight” (O’Brien 21). The pain they already carry is enough to drive any man completely mad, and the only real way to keep their own sense of morality is to not think about all these horrible things they are doing to an enemy they don’t know. It is always a confusing topic to think about murder and killing, and it is questionable whether they are the same or not. Murder sounds like taking lives of innocent people who did not deserved to die. While killing the enemy sounds like doing a justful act in a fight for something worthy. Both words mean the same thing and coincide with each other, yet have a complete different meaning internally to the soldiers from Vietnam.
This idea that killing an enemy is so much easier to live with instead of believing that a person exactly like everyone else, and doing what they think is right or was taught is right, is killed for doing what they believe is right. When hearing stories of people who murder and kill people without reason, they are thought to be monstrous and crazy, but soldiers who have done the same are not put into that same category of a monster. And why is that? War is hardly a just act, it is cruel and frightening and scarring, which is evident in the stories of The Things They Carried as well as Faces of the Enemy, both focussed on the Vietnam War. During this war, the soldiers had “no sense of place or direction, probing for an enemy that nobody could see” (O’Brien 221).. There was no telling exactly who they were killing, which may have made it easier to just shoot and kill the “unknown monster.” However, because it was a faceless enemy, it was also hard to tell who the “bad guy” was on the opposite side of America. Many soldiers had been killed on both sides, as well as people who had nothing to do with the war. Not knowing who they were fighting made it hard for Americans to know who they were against, so they had to almost dehumanize everyone they saw, just to be safe and sure. This entire idea of dehumanization is such an intense and cruel aspect of war, but made essential to justify these mass killings for one side to win. 
I love this. I find war psychology so fascinating. Dehumanizing the enemy is extremely common, but also extremely barbarous. Dehumanizing the enemy is an effective strategy that makes one a better soldier, but does it make them a better human? Desensitization can be both helpful and hurtful. For one's own sake, desensitizing oneself can actually be very beneficial because the emotional trauma associated with war can be so harmful if you let it affect you. But, not responding emotionally to events and death can make the others around you feel worse. Which do you think is better?
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