Hard Things in OLD MAN'S WAR

There are a lot of complicated issues going on in Old Man's War. Basically there is a intergallactic or something like that recruiting system that recruits seventy five year olds from earth, for an army that protects the colonies from intelligent alien enemies if they decide to attack. I find myself thinking about a lot of strange things that are going on this book. Like the fact that the recruits for the army are seventy five years old! that's just a little strange to me. With the help of the mini lesson on "hard things" in our stories, I have been able to begin to look at these things as not meaningless aspects of the story. But these elements in the story are purposefully put in to talk about something, put a point out there for the reader to reach out and grab onto.

I have often heard people talking about current wars as "young men fighting the old man's war" or "the poor fighting the rich's war". I think that what these people mean is, the people who are actually in power to get a war started are the old and the rich, the wise and the wealthy, and that these people can't actually fight in their war, they can just get it started. In this book though, even though it isn't very clear, I think it is just the opposite. The old men and women are fighting the war. Does this mean that the young people of their time are the people in power, and that the old people are now the slaves of the young? I'm not sure, it's really unclear at this point but I also think this could be representational for the old political powers finally stepping up the home plate and taking responsibility.

I also found it very interesting how all the characters in the book, men, women, gay, straight, they all veiw eachother as equals. They talk about their sexuality so casually with eachother, and they make a point of it, you as a reader will notice and stop, and be like you know what. This is important. Right now in the story everything is mostly peaceful, and I wonder if this is the reason the author made such a point of making it clear that these people view each other as equals. I predict that later in the story as the battle training, boot camp, and what ever lays ahead nears, they sexualities, and genders will start to rival or argue, face off. I think this because it seems to me that the peacefulness between the different people makes peace in this world, and when they become prejudiced against eachother, things will go bad. I don't have much proof to support this prediction, but it's what this text is saying to me. Maybe this is saying something about why our world isn't so peaceful.

This book takes an enteresting turn on how it expresses issues, and how they are presented makes me think certain things. I think it is interesting how now just by looking at the title of the book every time I pick it up to read it, I automatically think about indivduality and peace, and the way wars are created and fought.