PART 1:
While Zits considers whether or not to slash the captured white soldier's throat as an act of revenge for his own throat, he notices that the boy is around the same age as him. In addition, the boy looks scared, and obviously wants to live. Within these moments, Zits realizes how closely similar everybody is. We all want to live. Also, this boy had nothing to do with Zits' slashed throat, and he shouldn’t be blamed for the actions of another white man.
Everyone’s the same:
On Christmas during WWII, both sides decided that they should hold a temporary truce/ceasefire in celebration. They came together to play soccer, eat, and drink together. This shows that though they were on opposite sides of a war, they all felt the same way, representing, that deep down, we are all the same with the same drives.
Despite knowing that the opposing side will avenge their fallen comrades, both continue to seek revenge by killing and the hatred grows until one side is completely defeated. Today we fear Muslims because of the 9/11 incident and want to take revenge on them for what they’ve done to “our people”.
PART 2:
SLIDE 16
Birth of Violence and War
→ HUGE gap between “us” and “them”, “me” and “they”
→ “they” are different, “they” are harmful, “they” are out to get “us”
→ must destroy the “other” to help ourselves
In this situation, Zits always believed the whites were the criminals and the Indians were the harmless victims. However, when Zits sees what the Indians do after a victory, (tear their bodies apart, torture the ones barely alive), “they” are not so different from “us” because the other side stands on the same ground. Because both sides are so angry and vengeful, both target each other with no signs of empathy and continue to take it out on one another. Their lack of empathy prevents a peaceful solution to the anger thrown out by the two conflicting sides. When asked to murder the boy soldier, who was not directly the cause of the boy’s lost voice, Zits realizes that we are all the same in the end.
Part 3
Video clip/short story:
Ender’s Game
Trailer
Summary
The buggers have tried to invade Earth twice in the past, but after realizing that the humans were an intelligent species, they felt guilty and left them alone. Since there is a lack of ability to communicate with the other specie, the humans fear that they’ll invade a third time with even better technology than their first and second invasion, so they prepare a plan to wipe out the entire population of buggers. They recruit a young boy, Ender, to help with their massacre. Ender’s superiors and the people around him influenced him to think that buggers were evil. Only until Ender realizes that these “games” were reality did he begin to understand the weight of what he’s done to a population of peaceful creatures.
Analysis
The humans deciding to kill the Buggers based on their fear that they would be invaded again parallels how the white people and the indians attack each other constantly in Flight. They both think that the other side only wants to attack them, while in reality, both sides think that they are just defending themselves from the other. In Ender’s Game, the humans and the Buggers have no way to communicate with each other so they act upon what they think they know. This leads to the humans taking it upon themselves to attack the other side before they are attacked. The same thing happens between the white people and the Indians. They don’t understand each other, so they have to try to figure out what the other side is thinking, which usually results in thinking the worst, giving in to fear, not seeing things through, and killing each other. The humans killing the Buggers even after they were harmless is also like how the Indians continued to stab the corpses of the white men.
