Professor Cline
English 102
17 September 2010
My Toughts on "The Sandstorm."
I enjoyed reading this play overall. It’s definitely disturbing, but that’s what war is. I have never been in the military, so it’s hard for me to say if I would react the same way as this soldier did. I was a little shocked when I read the quote from LCPL DODD, “I took pictures of the dead hajjis. Hell if I could shoot’em with my M-16 I guess it’s no big deal to shoot’em with a camera too, you know.”(Huze.p.3). How many people do you have to kill or how many people do you have to see die, to reach the point where you think its ok to take pictures of the people you have killed? I can’t even grasp that mind set. I think the time DODD has spent in the war has made him numb or maybe it’s a coping mechanism, or a little bit of both.
I try to get inside the head of PFC WEEMS, after he finds a foot without a body and he is looking for the leg from which the foot came from, and I’m feeling extreme anxiety and panic. I can see how he lost touch with reality for a while, and actually tried to find the matching body part.
Another part of the play that affected me was from CPL WATERS. He is actually eating lunch while watching a man slowly die; a man who is begging to be put out of misery. WATERS said, “The more he wept and pleaded, the more I enjoyed my meal.” (Huze.p.9). My first reaction was, “wow is he cold, and how the hell could he eat let alone enjoy his meal? And why doesn’t he put the guy out of his misery?” Then I remind myself, how I have never seen death and dying like he has, I have never lived with the intense fear like he has, and I probably never will.
Works Cited
The Sandstorm. By Huze, Sean. Directed by David Fofi. The Elephant Asylum Theater, Los Angeles. 2005.
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