Generals and dictators of all sorts dream of the perfect army composed of perfect soldiers. Soldiers that obey orders with unwavering loyalty and dedication. Soldiers that kill at call and have no hesitations, personality, or emotions. The perfect soldier is an impossible dream. In John Steinbeck’s The Moon is Down, Steinbeck’s main purpose is to show that perfection is not possible in an army because soldiers are human. Humans are incredibly diverse with different characteristics and qualities. They are prone to becoming lonely, they have different characteristics, and they are fearful. Through these techniques Steinbeck proves that an army can never be perfect.…show more content… An example of a character that suffers greatly from loneliness is Lieutenant Tonder. Tonder is a soldier whose condition progressively deteriorates throughout the book. War is an amplifier of emotions. Soldiers like Tonder are separated from their homes and ways of life. They lose friends, family, and romantic partners and gain orders, regulations, and hostile foes. The combination of which takes a toll on the soldiers. Humans are imbued with a need to have a friend or a loved one. Compassion and love is a basic human necessity and Steinbeck shows how war deprives Tonder of it. Tonder desperately attempts to regain compassion and friendship and discard of his loneliness by introducing himself to Molly Morden. He says to her: ““I’m lonely to the point of illness. I’m lonely in the quiet and hatred.””(pg. 74) Tonder’s extreme loneliness and desperation lead to his continual advances on Molly which in turn lead to his death. Loneliness causes desperation in soldiers and clouds their judgement. Soldiers are prone to becoming lonely, which causes them to be foolish and…show more content… Steinbeck shows that some people are more qualified to be soldiers than others. Captain Loft is a good example of a good soldier. He has ambition, he uses military etiquette, and he knows everything about the military. On the other hand, Captain Bentick is a old man with no ambition and loves everything about the English, the people that they are fighting. Steinbeck made these characters opposites to symbolize the differences in every soldier and to show that some soldiers are better than others. The soldier’s characteristics either make them a good or bad soldier. Lieutenant Tonder is “a bitter poet who dreamed of perfect, ideal love of elevated young men for poor girls.” (Pg 22) Tonder is a poet by heart, not a soldier. How can Tonder be a perfect soldier if he was never meant to be one? Another soldier, Lieutenant Prackle, is a sentimental young man who is a wooer of girls and an artist. Steinbeck writes “In cabarets he sometimes made pencil sketches of his companions which were so good that he had often been told he should have been an artist.” (pg 22) Steinbeck created the character of Prackle to illustrate that many soldiers are poets, writers, and actors even. An artist is not the kind of person that should be a soldier. An artist sees the world more spectacularly, he doesn’t kill without hesitation. The point is that if the war never happened they would be
