By: Alyssa N. Madrid
Written from the point of view of a veteran, "For Export Only" by Matt Hopper, gives a view into the factory of our military and how they produce soldiers. When the word soldier comes to mind, we see camouflage, guns, flags, humvees, and planes. However, his story evokes both the person underneath the impersonal exterior of the uniform as well as the transition from civilian to soldier in a snapshot-like description. Judging solely from our knowledge of the military, service seems to be a stripping of the individual to be a vessel for orders; however, the author pushes the reader to humanize the people that are so easily enveloped by their profession. What we find relevant about this piece is the way in which our society and military dehumanize the people who are in the service and those who return home. People are always grateful to have the protection of our military but seldom think of it as the many individual faces and multi-faceted lives that make up this shield. This is not to mention how callous we as a society have become to the death of a soldier, be it either because we associate death with the occupation, or we fail to appreciate the valuable lives of people we have never met. This in itself is something important to reflect on because even those that survive a career in the military come home with physical and psychological problems that are supposed to be solved by subpar benefits. With this story in mind, we’d like our readers to mull over this: it may be easy to build a soldier, but how do we start the process of restoring the individual?
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Alyssa Madrid is a senior at NMSU majoring in Creative Writing with a minor in Government and is due to graduate in the spring. She enjoys reading as much as writing and will pursue a career in publishing post-graduation, with the hopes of publishing work of her own.
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