What stuck with me the most here is the mercy that M.I. shows to its people. Everyone was doing their best to look the other way when the recruit struck Sgt. Zim. They know, as we learn, that this sort of thing happens -- but they also know that it must not be allowed to happen. The Captain must have seen Zim's black eye, but ignored it until he couldn't anymore -- and at that point, he gave the maximum punishment he was allowed to give. Even though the men expressed a Christlike desire to take his punishment for him -- a smaller version of the Service they provide to the Terran Federation -- they know that they cannot. It can't be any other way, so the Captain makes Zim swear to quickly whoop the ass of the next recruit to try -- an act, ironically, of supreme mercy.
The discussion of value was very interesting, as well. It reminds me of an old story: the company calls out a contractor to fix their machine. He replaces a single screw and hands them a bill for $10,000. The manager says, 10,000 for one screw is ridiculous! I want an itemized bill! The contractor writes: 1 screw, .10. Knowing where to put it: $9999.90.
You know, you're right. At the end of the court martial, Spieksma (the Court) says,
"The Court will not permit you to resign. The Court wishes to add that your punishment is light simply because this Court possesses no jurisdiction to assign greater punishment. The authority which remanded you specified a field court-martial — why it so chose, this Court will not speculate. But had you been remanded for general court-martial, it seems certain that the evidence before this Court would have caused a general court to sentence you to hang by the neck until dead.
And at the beginning, the remanding officer is listed as Captain Ian Frankel. So indeed, the Captain was merciful to the poor bastard yet again by sending him to something less serious than a general court-martial. It was that Court that gave the maximum punishment, not Captain Frankel. He -- along with Sergeant Zim -- tried to go easy the entire time.
So far I'm failing to see any of that "fascism" this book is frequently accused of. They have a different view of crime, punishment and reward (and maybe the book is overly optimistic on how well those principles would work in practice), but that's about it. For all its flaws I'd much rather live in that world right now than current day Canada, Australia or even parts of Europe or the US.
Sure his boot camp and training is harsh, but that's what you get for being infantry. The military being strict isn't a reflection on the rest of society.
We (Canada) are actively starting an apartheid system: those who have their "Vax Cards" and those untermensch who do not. If that's not Fascism I'm not sure what is.
You have HIV? Walk around freely! No worries at all! In California you can have sex and not even tell your partner about it!
You don't have a government-ordered medical treatment? Locked in your house, soldiers patrolling the streets looking for dissenters. It's Germany 1938 in Canada, Australia and New Zealand! Next they'll come for the "fatties" and no one will defend their rights...
The hardest part of this book club is not re-reading this in one sitting.
Others have already mentioned in greater detail than I'd get into, the most striking parts, so I won't deep dive there. How the higher-ups are exceedingly compassionate, despite what it seems to the boots; Dubois' refutation of Marxist theory of value; corporal punishment in general (which I would find agreeable if any nation had competent governance)
What stuck with me re-reading these chapters is this small paragraph, sentence really, after Johnnie eavesdropped on Zim and Frankel.
I had an unsettling feeling that I had been completely mistaken as to the very nature of the world I was in, as if every part of it was something wildly different from what it appeared to be -- like discovering that your own mother isn't anyone you've ever seen before, but a stranger in a rubber mask.
As much as I'd like to read solely as escape from the real world, that in particular stuck current events in my head like an intrusive thought. I think people around here felt similar, though perhaps to a lesser extent, during Gamergate. What do you mean videogame companies and reviewers hate videogames?
But that's a sentiment I'm struggling with quite a bit now. I'm sure some of you are as well, especially those with close family of different political opinions. Never in a thousand years would I have expected the entire world to just roll over for tyranny over a bad cold, and yet here we are. The world we were taught about, values the Western world supposedly held dear, run roughshod over. Now you are required to show proof of being injected with an experimental "vaccine" which neither prevents you from catching or spreading illness, in order to travel, or even be in public spaces in some cities. And it only seems as though it will get worse. And what recourse is there for the common citizen? The world we were taught to live in, clearly doesn't exist. This representative democracy is neither representative of the populace, nor a democracy [acccktually its supposed to be a republic] any longer. Blatantly stolen elections (or at the least highly statistically improbable), senile men propped up as a figurehead for who knows who is directing things from the shadows, if there even is anything, the foremost values of the US appearing to not be freedom, but instead a deep-set need to spread alphabet and bn degeneracy to every corner of the globe.
It's one thing to say "the government is corrupt/inept/not looking out for your interests, etc." and quite another to fully have that internalized. For it to be so blatant. For you to know that nobody is coming to save you from any of this, it's just how the world is, and all the pretty lies you were taught growing up were just that. Maybe they weren't lies back then, but they are now.
Escapism is only appropriate in so far as what you are trying to escape from is limited in scope (either temporary, localized to a small area/group, or both) as it allows you to mentally remove yourself from stress and come back and deal with it when you are in a better frame of mind. Indulging in escapism otherwise is harmful.
I'm not saying this to lecture you, but to point out that there are a lot of major issues right now that aren't simply going to go away.
I think the Kübler-Ross model of grief has some relevance here (though it's not perfect.) People are grieving for the loss of the world they were brought up in (or realizing that it was a lie, depending on how you look at it). 'Most' seem to be in the Denial and Bargaining stages, professing that the government is just trying to protect us and if we'd all just wear our masks and get the shot this will be over and we can go back to normal. Pretty much everyone here I'd imagine is somewhere in the Anger and/or Depression stages. We're (justifiably) angry at our governments betraying their founding/professed principles, and/or feeling there is nothing we can do against this assault on our freedoms. None of these reactions is dealing with the problem in a healthy way (at least on their own.), and I'd argue in this case that simple Acceptance isn't healthy or right either.
What we need to do is start actively working toward fixing these issues. And I'm not talking about donating to causes, or voting for politicians (we saw in the last election how effective that is.) Lobbying your local and state politicians to actively oppose these totalitarian/marxist mandates and policies, punish the people and organizations pushing/enacting them, and enact laws and policies to expand and protect personal freedom and traditional values; Preparing yourself/your family to be independent from the existing system pushing enacting marxist values and policies, and attacking the values and people that built the western world; Educating your friends/family about what's been going on. These are the types of things that need to be done (among others) if we want to reverse the takeover of our society by marxists.
The first time I read this, I didn't understand how serious striking a superior officer during war was, but I could tell Hendricks was a fool. The officers blaming themselves for letting him break the rule stuck with me, though.
Now, after I've read the Hornblower series, I knew exactly what the potential punishment could have been, and was screaming at the kid to take a hint and shut up.
As for the rest, I like the examination of how boot camp works, showing how it's exactly as hard as it needs to be.
And that's the problem. Zim wasn't where he needed to be mentally. And Frankel is right that if Zim couldn't stay impersonal and professional in this case, then putting him back in ranks would be a mistake.
The first time I read this, I didn't understand how serious striking a superior officer during war was, but I could tell Hendricks was a fool. The officers blaming themselves for letting him break the rule stuck with me, though.
I'm half a decade out from it so my memory's rusty, but this was the sort of thing we picked up in the Education program and teaching jobs I had. It's all about managing and leading the 30+ kids you have. The good teachers, their classes would run like clockwork. The students would know what to do, wouldn't (usually) act out.. when something happened the teacher would step in and make a decisive decision. If a classroom was chaotic and crazy it'd definitely be the teacher's fault because there are all sorts of little things they either did or didn't do that contributed to the complete loss of leadership and control.
Saw this first hand, myself. When I was doing my internship I could pick out the precise moment I lost leadership with that group of students and I wasn't able to get it back. It's definitely a skill.
The one part that always stood out to me during these chapters is when Johnny eyeballed the launcher shot instead of using the proper method. The implication that if he did that in a real drop he could very well kill his drop mates. It instilled in me a commitment to always train like it's the real thing, no matter what the situation.
The succinct demolition of the labor theory of value in this section is positively one of my favorite bits of 'preaching' in any work. I just love that some guy writing a short novel is able to destroy such a core tenet of marxism in such a short example (even with the dressing up he gives it) that it wouldn't even meet length requirements for a middle school paper. Dubois has a lot of great bits throughout the book but that and the bit in the second chapter about 'violence has settled more things than anything else in history' really stick with me.
Across these chapters (and the whole book really), Heinlen is trying to get across that the value of a thing is based on not only what it gets you, but also what you have to give up for it. The training the M I cadets go through seems needlessly harsh both to the troopers and (I'd imagine) the readers. Requiring cadets to go through two day-long marches with no food or shelter provided? Live bullets in training exercises? Dropping cadets naked in the wilderness with no supervision for survival training? These actions seem barbaric to a civilian, but they have add value both in what they cost the cadets, and the effectiveness of the lessons they teach.
One other thing I'd like to mention that I haven't seen anyone cover in this discussion (though I believe someone brought it up in the previous one) is the point made about the purpose of war not being to kill your enemy, but to make them do what you want. I think this is often something that is forgotten by both civilians and officials in modern times, both in the sense of not enacting policies conducive of accomplishing the given goals of a war, being unwilling to commit to the actions that will accomplish those goals.
I think it's a lot deeper than that. It's about the weight of the role of leadership. The officer's higher up talks to him about the incident and berates the officer for letting the cadet land the punch. The officer is just as upset about the situation as the cadet, if not moreso. To bear the mantle of leadership is to necessarily be better than those who serve under you. You have to always been at peak performance for the sake of those below you, even when engaging in duties that will already garner animosity. Going easy on the cadet when disciplining him, slipping up for even a moment now means that cadet has to be punished. It's as much a failing of the officer as it is for the cadet.
Leadership is a burden that must not be taken lightly, for failure has consequences for those in your care.
Leadership is a burden that must not be taken lightly, for failure has consequences for those in your care.
Which ties into why they only let citizens vote in a way. It's the sister reason to 'only those willing to lay down their lives for the Federation can have a say in how it operates.'.
Is it a realistic depiction of the motivations behind boot camp? I recall the line about him thinking it was basically hell, but also not wanting to go into battle unless it was with people who had been through that same hell and it resonated, but I've no point of reference for real world military endeavors. I'd like to hear from someone who's been through it if that's a reflection of reality or just high minded idealism.
I think it can be a reflection of reality. I was in the Air Force so the mission isn’t quite like the army or marines. It certainly felt like hell at the time. Air Force boot camp isn’t as physical as the other branches but they love to play psychological or mind games with you.
But I can understand what he is saying about battle. That also reflects Heinlein’s military experience
A very interesting part of the Bible! Most battles back then were "who has the most, wins" but there were times when quality outmatched superiors numbers, for sure.
Remains true to this day as well.
I linked the Battle of Kapyong above, a small but very important part of the Korean War.
I'm through Chapter 7 and I'm the most interested in the characteristics of the overall society as a whole. There's a lot of hints (and I'm not asking for spoilers). Apparently those that don't complete service are second tier people, perhaps not allowed to vote at all, etc. It seems that's okay though, as Johnny's dad is a successful businessman and doesn't want his son to go into the service, so whatever is excluded to those with no service didn't change his mind on it. If anything it's hard to tell because the service seems to have a positive opinion among the young and those that are in it, but everyone else not so much.
Punishment as a training tool seems fair to be if used appropriately. They gave the guy every chance to get out of it as he was being a total turd. They also made clear at one point to make sure he acknowledged he had been made familiar with the rules. It's his own fault. I do think the accompanying bad conduct release seems a bit harsh, since it's implied that his entire life is totally ruined now. I'm not sure that punishment fits the crime. But I didn't make the rules.
Overall, I like the concept of corporal punishment, particularly for non-military crimes. Prison is stupid and a tax on society, and I'd much rather see something like this caning more prevalent in the real world. It has to be public and humiliating just as in the book. I guess the bad part is I don't want any of it in the hands of most of the current governments, as they'd be flogging so many people for wrongthink it would be a 24/7 operation.
The only other thing that stuck out to be is it seemed like they shrugged off training deaths like it was common and nothing, particularly the part about what I presume is the survival training. Could not such a technologically advanced society monitor this and not let the failures die but retrieve them and give a medical discharge? It didn't sound like they were talking accidents, but just inability to survive the conditions was part of the weeding out process. Maybe I was just reading too much into it.
Only people who have completed a term of service are eligible to vote/hold office. That's what the book means when it talks about 'Franchise'. Most people are content with the freedoms civilians have and never even try to enter the service (I don't remember if the book ever gives a breakdown regarding what exact portion of the federation are 'citizens' vs. 'civilians', but I think it's implied to be single or low double digit percentages who are citizens and entitled to vote.)
Also, I don't think it's right to say they shrug off training deaths as 'nothing'. They had the whole regiment (I think that's the right term), including officers, spend 13 days looking for their bodies, had them buried with full military honors, and I believe (technically) posthumously granted them Citizenship, or at least actual ranks, not just 'Cadet such-and-such'.
I covered this in more detail in my top-level post on this thread, but Heinlen is trying to portray that value is (at least partially) on what something costs someone. The training is harsh, and even sometimes lethal, not only because it must be in order to be effective (or at least is made more effective by that risk), but also because the soldiers will value what they gain through it much more because of that risk.
it seemed like they shrugged off training deaths like it was common and nothing, particularly the part about what I presume is the survival training. Could not such a technologically advanced society monitor this and not let the failures die but retrieve them and give a medical discharge?
They do take it seriously, but accept that it's part of the package: push the men (no girls in MI in this novel!) as hard as possible. Doing that involves risks, including deaths.
Heinlein wrote this in the late 50's, so even for Sci-Fi the things we have now (GPS, heartrate & health monitors) were far fetched. They were in the battle suits of course!
I found that part odd as well. The Canadian wilderness is no place to dump a pile of recruits for what, 3-4 days without any equipment at all? It doesn't say the duration, but that they were buck-naked and had to travel 40 miles.
Johnnie killed rabbits with flaked rocks? The guy's a murder machine! (They had some training in that area, of course)
It does say earlier that they could clear 50 miles in 10 hours on the level, so they were dumped only about a day's march away for their survival training
The Rocky Mountains are far from "level". It took 3 days I think? And it gets plenty cold at night, even in summer.
It seemed 'over the top' but he didn't dwell on it, just made the points of recruits dying and MI never leaves a man behind.
Apparently those that don't complete service are second tier people, perhaps not allowed to vote at all, etc. It seems that's okay though, as Johnny's dad is a successful businessman and doesn't want his son to go into the service, so whatever is excluded to those with no service didn't change his mind on it. If anything it's hard to tell because the service seems to have a positive opinion among the young and those that are in it, but everyone else not so much.
The percentages are listed later in the book and this idea is expanded upon as well.
I washed out of boot camp, it was a lot like that only far harder in the novel, of course. 1 bullet every 500 rounds? Insane risks! Drop and freeze? Necessary but brutal. My Sergeant was a little like Zim, a combat veteran (The Battle of Kapyong among others, PPCLI Canadian Light Infantry - an Elite unit to say the least) and our Captain was a little like Frankel: confident and competent, a friendly fellow.
The best part was the "overheard" conversation between Zim and the Captain, of course. It covers a lot of ground (exposition actually) in a very believable way.
Soldier! Shut and soldier!
Lolz!
The timing of the letters arriving was a little... TOO convenient, I think. They showed up and said the right things at the right time, eh? The flashback was highly informative too.
Heinlein slips a quote from Lincoln into Chapter 7, I love the Thomas Paine quotation in this section: true words!
It's been mentioned here already, but I think the acceptance of deaths in training is an interesting one because it provides a glimpse into their society's attitude towards death overall. A lot of SciFi books go down the road of a futuristic society that tries its utmost to banish death. This is similar trajectory to how our own "modern" society has gone, culminating in our insane current state where so how the only thing that matters is reducing deaths from a virus to as close to zero as possible.
Of course our current attitude to death actually is costing more lives than otherwise due to costs of these 'anti-virus' measures, which makes no sense in a rational cost/benefit analysis. Yet the reason these can be sustained, in my view, is that the drive to reduce death as much as possible becomes driven by the ultimate appeal to emotion - people dying is the worst thing ever, so you need to be on our side otherwise you want people to die and that makes you the worst person ever. This attitude is only possible in a society that has an unhealthy attitude towards accepting death as part of life. The cold, harsh reality is that we are all mortal, and we will all die. It shouldn't even need to be said, yet it seems that such reminders are needed in modern society. Death is far from the worse thing that can happen to someone, simply because it happens to everyone - so why would we make something that is part of life the "worst" thing that can happen? Not living our lives to the fullest extent is, in fact, far worse than dying itself.
Going back to the book, it seems to me that Heinlein is proposing that attempts to avoid death at all costs, which must have already been apparent in his time, are in fact a flawed approach to a society's evolution, and that a healthy successful society would revert back to a more traditional approach where death is accept as a necessary part of life, both for individuals and their society.
How did you feel about the necessity of punishment as a training tool?
To use an old Southern expression, "there's no education in the second kick of a mule." Corporal punishment works in education. There's an old R. Lee Ermey interview where he admits that he could have talked to a recruit that was causing issues, but that doing so would have taken time away from his other recruits, thereby hurting their Vietnam survival chances... so he'd just hit them and move on.
What stuck with me the most here is the mercy that M.I. shows to its people. Everyone was doing their best to look the other way when the recruit struck Sgt. Zim. They know, as we learn, that this sort of thing happens -- but they also know that it must not be allowed to happen. The Captain must have seen Zim's black eye, but ignored it until he couldn't anymore -- and at that point, he gave the maximum punishment he was allowed to give. Even though the men expressed a Christlike desire to take his punishment for him -- a smaller version of the Service they provide to the Terran Federation -- they know that they cannot. It can't be any other way, so the Captain makes Zim swear to quickly whoop the ass of the next recruit to try -- an act, ironically, of supreme mercy.
The discussion of value was very interesting, as well. It reminds me of an old story: the company calls out a contractor to fix their machine. He replaces a single screw and hands them a bill for $10,000. The manager says, 10,000 for one screw is ridiculous! I want an itemized bill! The contractor writes: 1 screw, .10. Knowing where to put it: $9999.90.
Actually if you go back, he didn't.
As Lieutenant Spieksma says, had this been referred to a general court, the sentence would have been death.
He did a field court because it was the LEAST punishment he could possibly give once he knew what the crime was.
You know, you're right. At the end of the court martial, Spieksma (the Court) says,
And at the beginning, the remanding officer is listed as Captain Ian Frankel. So indeed, the Captain was merciful to the poor bastard yet again by sending him to something less serious than a general court-martial. It was that Court that gave the maximum punishment, not Captain Frankel. He -- along with Sergeant Zim -- tried to go easy the entire time.
So far I'm failing to see any of that "fascism" this book is frequently accused of. They have a different view of crime, punishment and reward (and maybe the book is overly optimistic on how well those principles would work in practice), but that's about it. For all its flaws I'd much rather live in that world right now than current day Canada, Australia or even parts of Europe or the US.
Sure his boot camp and training is harsh, but that's what you get for being infantry. The military being strict isn't a reflection on the rest of society.
We (Canada) are actively starting an apartheid system: those who have their "Vax Cards" and those untermensch who do not. If that's not Fascism I'm not sure what is.
You have HIV? Walk around freely! No worries at all! In California you can have sex and not even tell your partner about it!
You don't have a government-ordered medical treatment? Locked in your house, soldiers patrolling the streets looking for dissenters. It's Germany 1938 in Canada, Australia and New Zealand! Next they'll come for the "fatties" and no one will defend their rights...
The guy who made the movie that put the fascism in the story never read the book.
He just wanted a propaganda piece.
The hardest part of this book club is not re-reading this in one sitting.
Others have already mentioned in greater detail than I'd get into, the most striking parts, so I won't deep dive there. How the higher-ups are exceedingly compassionate, despite what it seems to the boots; Dubois' refutation of Marxist theory of value; corporal punishment in general (which I would find agreeable if any nation had competent governance)
What stuck with me re-reading these chapters is this small paragraph, sentence really, after Johnnie eavesdropped on Zim and Frankel.
As much as I'd like to read solely as escape from the real world, that in particular stuck current events in my head like an intrusive thought. I think people around here felt similar, though perhaps to a lesser extent, during Gamergate. What do you mean videogame companies and reviewers hate videogames?
But that's a sentiment I'm struggling with quite a bit now. I'm sure some of you are as well, especially those with close family of different political opinions. Never in a thousand years would I have expected the entire world to just roll over for tyranny over a bad cold, and yet here we are. The world we were taught about, values the Western world supposedly held dear, run roughshod over. Now you are required to show proof of being injected with an experimental "vaccine" which neither prevents you from catching or spreading illness, in order to travel, or even be in public spaces in some cities. And it only seems as though it will get worse. And what recourse is there for the common citizen? The world we were taught to live in, clearly doesn't exist. This representative democracy is neither representative of the populace, nor a democracy [acccktually its supposed to be a republic] any longer. Blatantly stolen elections (or at the least highly statistically improbable), senile men propped up as a figurehead for who knows who is directing things from the shadows, if there even is anything, the foremost values of the US appearing to not be freedom, but instead a deep-set need to spread alphabet and bn degeneracy to every corner of the globe.
It's one thing to say "the government is corrupt/inept/not looking out for your interests, etc." and quite another to fully have that internalized. For it to be so blatant. For you to know that nobody is coming to save you from any of this, it's just how the world is, and all the pretty lies you were taught growing up were just that. Maybe they weren't lies back then, but they are now.
It's one thing to realize that the world you grew up in no longer exists it's another thing to realize it never did.
Escapism is only appropriate in so far as what you are trying to escape from is limited in scope (either temporary, localized to a small area/group, or both) as it allows you to mentally remove yourself from stress and come back and deal with it when you are in a better frame of mind. Indulging in escapism otherwise is harmful. I'm not saying this to lecture you, but to point out that there are a lot of major issues right now that aren't simply going to go away.
I think the Kübler-Ross model of grief has some relevance here (though it's not perfect.) People are grieving for the loss of the world they were brought up in (or realizing that it was a lie, depending on how you look at it). 'Most' seem to be in the Denial and Bargaining stages, professing that the government is just trying to protect us and if we'd all just wear our masks and get the shot this will be over and we can go back to normal. Pretty much everyone here I'd imagine is somewhere in the Anger and/or Depression stages. We're (justifiably) angry at our governments betraying their founding/professed principles, and/or feeling there is nothing we can do against this assault on our freedoms. None of these reactions is dealing with the problem in a healthy way (at least on their own.), and I'd argue in this case that simple Acceptance isn't healthy or right either.
What we need to do is start actively working toward fixing these issues. And I'm not talking about donating to causes, or voting for politicians (we saw in the last election how effective that is.) Lobbying your local and state politicians to actively oppose these totalitarian/marxist mandates and policies, punish the people and organizations pushing/enacting them, and enact laws and policies to expand and protect personal freedom and traditional values; Preparing yourself/your family to be independent from the existing system pushing enacting marxist values and policies, and attacking the values and people that built the western world; Educating your friends/family about what's been going on. These are the types of things that need to be done (among others) if we want to reverse the takeover of our society by marxists.
The first time I read this, I didn't understand how serious striking a superior officer during war was, but I could tell Hendricks was a fool. The officers blaming themselves for letting him break the rule stuck with me, though.
Now, after I've read the Hornblower series, I knew exactly what the potential punishment could have been, and was screaming at the kid to take a hint and shut up.
As for the rest, I like the examination of how boot camp works, showing how it's exactly as hard as it needs to be.
And the fool managed to connect.
And that's the problem. Zim wasn't where he needed to be mentally. And Frankel is right that if Zim couldn't stay impersonal and professional in this case, then putting him back in ranks would be a mistake.
I'm half a decade out from it so my memory's rusty, but this was the sort of thing we picked up in the Education program and teaching jobs I had. It's all about managing and leading the 30+ kids you have. The good teachers, their classes would run like clockwork. The students would know what to do, wouldn't (usually) act out.. when something happened the teacher would step in and make a decisive decision. If a classroom was chaotic and crazy it'd definitely be the teacher's fault because there are all sorts of little things they either did or didn't do that contributed to the complete loss of leadership and control.
Saw this first hand, myself. When I was doing my internship I could pick out the precise moment I lost leadership with that group of students and I wasn't able to get it back. It's definitely a skill.
The one part that always stood out to me during these chapters is when Johnny eyeballed the launcher shot instead of using the proper method. The implication that if he did that in a real drop he could very well kill his drop mates. It instilled in me a commitment to always train like it's the real thing, no matter what the situation.
This didn't show up in my mentions, but it's done.
The succinct demolition of the labor theory of value in this section is positively one of my favorite bits of 'preaching' in any work. I just love that some guy writing a short novel is able to destroy such a core tenet of marxism in such a short example (even with the dressing up he gives it) that it wouldn't even meet length requirements for a middle school paper. Dubois has a lot of great bits throughout the book but that and the bit in the second chapter about 'violence has settled more things than anything else in history' really stick with me.
Across these chapters (and the whole book really), Heinlen is trying to get across that the value of a thing is based on not only what it gets you, but also what you have to give up for it. The training the M I cadets go through seems needlessly harsh both to the troopers and (I'd imagine) the readers. Requiring cadets to go through two day-long marches with no food or shelter provided? Live bullets in training exercises? Dropping cadets naked in the wilderness with no supervision for survival training? These actions seem barbaric to a civilian, but they have add value both in what they cost the cadets, and the effectiveness of the lessons they teach.
One other thing I'd like to mention that I haven't seen anyone cover in this discussion (though I believe someone brought it up in the previous one) is the point made about the purpose of war not being to kill your enemy, but to make them do what you want. I think this is often something that is forgotten by both civilians and officials in modern times, both in the sense of not enacting policies conducive of accomplishing the given goals of a war, being unwilling to commit to the actions that will accomplish those goals.
I think it's a lot deeper than that. It's about the weight of the role of leadership. The officer's higher up talks to him about the incident and berates the officer for letting the cadet land the punch. The officer is just as upset about the situation as the cadet, if not moreso. To bear the mantle of leadership is to necessarily be better than those who serve under you. You have to always been at peak performance for the sake of those below you, even when engaging in duties that will already garner animosity. Going easy on the cadet when disciplining him, slipping up for even a moment now means that cadet has to be punished. It's as much a failing of the officer as it is for the cadet.
Leadership is a burden that must not be taken lightly, for failure has consequences for those in your care.
Which ties into why they only let citizens vote in a way. It's the sister reason to 'only those willing to lay down their lives for the Federation can have a say in how it operates.'.
When I read this part it brought back memories of my boot camp. It’s very interesting to get his thoughts overall and the punishment.
Is it a realistic depiction of the motivations behind boot camp? I recall the line about him thinking it was basically hell, but also not wanting to go into battle unless it was with people who had been through that same hell and it resonated, but I've no point of reference for real world military endeavors. I'd like to hear from someone who's been through it if that's a reflection of reality or just high minded idealism.
I think it can be a reflection of reality. I was in the Air Force so the mission isn’t quite like the army or marines. It certainly felt like hell at the time. Air Force boot camp isn’t as physical as the other branches but they love to play psychological or mind games with you.
But I can understand what he is saying about battle. That also reflects Heinlein’s military experience
A very interesting part of the Bible! Most battles back then were "who has the most, wins" but there were times when quality outmatched superiors numbers, for sure.
Remains true to this day as well.
I linked the Battle of Kapyong above, a small but very important part of the Korean War.
I'm through Chapter 7 and I'm the most interested in the characteristics of the overall society as a whole. There's a lot of hints (and I'm not asking for spoilers). Apparently those that don't complete service are second tier people, perhaps not allowed to vote at all, etc. It seems that's okay though, as Johnny's dad is a successful businessman and doesn't want his son to go into the service, so whatever is excluded to those with no service didn't change his mind on it. If anything it's hard to tell because the service seems to have a positive opinion among the young and those that are in it, but everyone else not so much.
Punishment as a training tool seems fair to be if used appropriately. They gave the guy every chance to get out of it as he was being a total turd. They also made clear at one point to make sure he acknowledged he had been made familiar with the rules. It's his own fault. I do think the accompanying bad conduct release seems a bit harsh, since it's implied that his entire life is totally ruined now. I'm not sure that punishment fits the crime. But I didn't make the rules.
Overall, I like the concept of corporal punishment, particularly for non-military crimes. Prison is stupid and a tax on society, and I'd much rather see something like this caning more prevalent in the real world. It has to be public and humiliating just as in the book. I guess the bad part is I don't want any of it in the hands of most of the current governments, as they'd be flogging so many people for wrongthink it would be a 24/7 operation.
The only other thing that stuck out to be is it seemed like they shrugged off training deaths like it was common and nothing, particularly the part about what I presume is the survival training. Could not such a technologically advanced society monitor this and not let the failures die but retrieve them and give a medical discharge? It didn't sound like they were talking accidents, but just inability to survive the conditions was part of the weeding out process. Maybe I was just reading too much into it.
Only people who have completed a term of service are eligible to vote/hold office. That's what the book means when it talks about 'Franchise'. Most people are content with the freedoms civilians have and never even try to enter the service (I don't remember if the book ever gives a breakdown regarding what exact portion of the federation are 'citizens' vs. 'civilians', but I think it's implied to be single or low double digit percentages who are citizens and entitled to vote.)
Also, I don't think it's right to say they shrug off training deaths as 'nothing'. They had the whole regiment (I think that's the right term), including officers, spend 13 days looking for their bodies, had them buried with full military honors, and I believe (technically) posthumously granted them Citizenship, or at least actual ranks, not just 'Cadet such-and-such'.
I covered this in more detail in my top-level post on this thread, but Heinlen is trying to portray that value is (at least partially) on what something costs someone. The training is harsh, and even sometimes lethal, not only because it must be in order to be effective (or at least is made more effective by that risk), but also because the soldiers will value what they gain through it much more because of that risk.
They do take it seriously, but accept that it's part of the package: push the men (no girls in MI in this novel!) as hard as possible. Doing that involves risks, including deaths.
Heinlein wrote this in the late 50's, so even for Sci-Fi the things we have now (GPS, heartrate & health monitors) were far fetched. They were in the battle suits of course!
I found that part odd as well. The Canadian wilderness is no place to dump a pile of recruits for what, 3-4 days without any equipment at all? It doesn't say the duration, but that they were buck-naked and had to travel 40 miles.
Johnnie killed rabbits with flaked rocks? The guy's a murder machine! (They had some training in that area, of course)
It does say earlier that they could clear 50 miles in 10 hours on the level, so they were dumped only about a day's march away for their survival training
The Rocky Mountains are far from "level". It took 3 days I think? And it gets plenty cold at night, even in summer.
It seemed 'over the top' but he didn't dwell on it, just made the points of recruits dying and MI never leaves a man behind.
The percentages are listed later in the book and this idea is expanded upon as well.
I washed out of boot camp, it was a lot like that only far harder in the novel, of course. 1 bullet every 500 rounds? Insane risks! Drop and freeze? Necessary but brutal. My Sergeant was a little like Zim, a combat veteran (The Battle of Kapyong among others, PPCLI Canadian Light Infantry - an Elite unit to say the least) and our Captain was a little like Frankel: confident and competent, a friendly fellow.
The best part was the "overheard" conversation between Zim and the Captain, of course. It covers a lot of ground (exposition actually) in a very believable way.
Lolz!
The timing of the letters arriving was a little... TOO convenient, I think. They showed up and said the right things at the right time, eh? The flashback was highly informative too.
Heinlein slips a quote from Lincoln into Chapter 7, I love the Thomas Paine quotation in this section: true words!
Mail deliveries were timed on occasion for morale effect, in my boot camp experience.
It's been mentioned here already, but I think the acceptance of deaths in training is an interesting one because it provides a glimpse into their society's attitude towards death overall. A lot of SciFi books go down the road of a futuristic society that tries its utmost to banish death. This is similar trajectory to how our own "modern" society has gone, culminating in our insane current state where so how the only thing that matters is reducing deaths from a virus to as close to zero as possible.
Of course our current attitude to death actually is costing more lives than otherwise due to costs of these 'anti-virus' measures, which makes no sense in a rational cost/benefit analysis. Yet the reason these can be sustained, in my view, is that the drive to reduce death as much as possible becomes driven by the ultimate appeal to emotion - people dying is the worst thing ever, so you need to be on our side otherwise you want people to die and that makes you the worst person ever. This attitude is only possible in a society that has an unhealthy attitude towards accepting death as part of life. The cold, harsh reality is that we are all mortal, and we will all die. It shouldn't even need to be said, yet it seems that such reminders are needed in modern society. Death is far from the worse thing that can happen to someone, simply because it happens to everyone - so why would we make something that is part of life the "worst" thing that can happen? Not living our lives to the fullest extent is, in fact, far worse than dying itself.
Going back to the book, it seems to me that Heinlein is proposing that attempts to avoid death at all costs, which must have already been apparent in his time, are in fact a flawed approach to a society's evolution, and that a healthy successful society would revert back to a more traditional approach where death is accept as a necessary part of life, both for individuals and their society.
Will have to bow out for this one as far as giving my thoughts on the questions, fell back behind with law school starting back up. Darn!
Oh nah, I should be caught up for next Monday. Thankfully the book's a much easier read than court opinions and legal rules
To use an old Southern expression, "there's no education in the second kick of a mule." Corporal punishment works in education. There's an old R. Lee Ermey interview where he admits that he could have talked to a recruit that was causing issues, but that doing so would have taken time away from his other recruits, thereby hurting their Vietnam survival chances... so he'd just hit them and move on.