He is the only one who gathers his brothers around him and goes forward with a cool head and a calm pulse to exterminate his species. It is the only animal that marches out for sordid wages... and helps massacre strangers of its own kind who have done it no harm and with whom it has no quarrels... And in the intervals between one campaign and another washes the blood from his hands and works with his mouth for the universal brotherhood of man." Mark Twain points out the atrocities that men commit to each other just as Klay does in his novel. Novels like Klay's that chronicle the bloodshed of war act as mechanisms of understanding for civilians who are generally kept in the dark. If war has such devastating effects on societies, why do nations continue to take part in this act of violence? To keep blood off their hands, elites put soldiers in difficult situations where they are expected to get dirty. The question remains: is it good to ask your peers to take part in it