Boom- down. Like cement.

When an American, teenage boy hits the age of eighteen, they are required by law to sign up for the draft, should one ever be instituted. Some accept this fate with quiet acceptance. Others, such as myself, dread this inevitable outcome with cold blood slowly creeping through their system, procrastinating their destiny until the last possible moment. The reason being a unexplainable terror for the horrors of war illustrated in this book. Imagine walking back from relieving one's self, smiling away, only to have the brains and teeth blown out of one's mouth in the blink of an eye. After all of the work and planing and hopes for the future, to have it all just thrown away in the blink of an eye, to see the light from a comrades eyes slowly disappear... this is a fate worse than a thousand agonizing deaths.

Having one's heart and soul weighed down by all the "grief, terror, loving, longing, all the intangibles.... and to carry the heaviest weight of all, barely held- back fear" (O'Brien 20) is a feeling that no person that has not experienced this can imagine. Lavender fell like cement not because of the weight he carried, but because the emotions in his soul had hardened his heart and made it weigh that of cement.