A prevalent theme in American War is the triumph of revenge over love. The concept of revenge requires a target, however, such as a person or an organization. Dana’s death is unique in that a rogue drone is responsible for the bombing. The reason these rogue drones exist is because the southern states destroyed the command center. Originally, the drones were created by the north as a weapon. Neither country intended to have these drones kill innocent civilians. Dana’s death has a significant impact on Sarat and, ultimately, contributed to her decision to bomb the country. But who or what is to blame for the existence of these rogue drones?
This problem is common and is becoming increasingly prevalent. The advent of self-driving cars in particular highlights this issue as people’s lives is directly in the hands of automation. The article “Self-driving car dilemmas reveal that moral choices are not universal” found at https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07135-0 explains the issue of automation. The primary issue is that decisions regarding human lives have to be decided before the events take place. The degree of separation between the decision and the action complicates the morality of the decision made. In the case of Dana’s death, a programmer decided that the drones should engage enemy combatants. The morality of this decision is questionable on the grounds of war being moral at all but is generally accepted even in present United States culture. In the novel, when the command station was destroyed, the programming became scrambled. Civilians such as Dana were sometimes confused with enemy combatants. But the question of who made the immoral decision is obscure. It was not immoral of the south to destroy an enemy weapon that was actively harming them. The north’s responsibility is also questionable since their original objective was to eliminate military targets. No real concrete decision was made to kill Dana, which makes it difficult to assign blame and eventually revenge. This is why Sarat ultimately decides to release the Reunification Plague on the entire country. She feels the need to get revenge, but nobody is directly responsible for Dana’s death. Therefore, she seeks revenge on the entire world continuing the cycle of hatred.
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AuthorI am a mechanical engineering student graduating this semester. Studying the role of societal change in the apocalypse interests me. Archives
April 2021
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