Through the young characters featured in Sudden, Long shows readers that war eliminates innocence in youth. The majority of soldiers who fought in wars, such as the Civil War in Sudden, were very young men who were forced to take part in war because conscription was compulsory. Therefore, they have to experience the horrific things such as killing and brutality which no one should ever have to go through and so this takes away their purity. Long’s short story features soldiers who were “eighteen and nineteen-years-old with eyes of old men”, this suggest they have witnessed and experienced many horrible things at war at an age too young which leaves them demented. The narrator of the story was also a ‘new green Lieutenant’ with no true experience
