The Poppy War

Content Warnings: This section of the guide discusses self-harm, drug addiction, racism, classism, colorism, explicit wartime violence, sexual assault, human experimentation, suicide, and genocide.

The brutality of war manifests in several different ways, but it is primarily tied to the dehumanization of one’s enemies. Both the Mugenese and the Nikara are taught to dehumanize each other—and the Speerlies—to make killing easier. This theme is tied to The Influence of Stories on Social Structures.

When Rin kills her first Mugenese soldier, she registers “temporary shock, then the grim realization that she needed to do this again, and again, and again” (242). Until this point, Rin has not given any thought to her enemies. When Kitay wonders what they look like, Rin says she doesn’t want to know, because “then [she] might think they’re human. And they’re not human” (232-33). She justifies this dehumanization with the Federation’s previous war crimes. The fact that Kitay asks the question at all—and often wonders what the Mugenese fight for and how they feel—shows that the Nikara are not educated about the Mugenese beyond biased history lessons.

Battle becomes more difficult when Rin is forced to acknowledge the humanity of Mugenese soldiers. On Rin’s first mission with