How Does Kip Dehumanize

Similarly, Kip is traumatized in his role as a sapper because he learned to not trust anything in his path, and this experience leaves Kip dehumanized and stunned in fear. As the narrator describes how Kip finds Hana’s villa, Kip appears to be dehumanized: “His eyes took in the room before they took her in, swept across it like a spray of radar” (76). Working as a sapper has become second-nature to Kip, and he approaches all situations by first looking for danger. Kip has taken all human emotion out of his actions, and his eyes like “radar” only contribute to his machine-like actions. Because Kip had to constantly search for mines during the war, he is unable to break this habit since he is aware of the fragility of his world. As Kip reflects upon his training to be a sapper, the narrator notes that he would “fall asleep with diagrams and
Kip treats everything he does like he is defusing a bomb. However, Kip is unable to always control his world because the German army constantly renovates their bomb fuses, so Kip has to quickly adapt to new situations in order to stay alive (199). As the war progresses, Kip continues to be a sapper, but his actions are so methodical and mechanized that he loses almost all of his humanity (216). With the repetitive motions associated with defusing bombs, Kip becomes robotic and he is only valued for his lack of humanity. During this time, Kip represses his emotions and his fears because they would hinder his ability to be a sapper. By defusing bombs, Kip is taught to be less human, but when he realizes the extent to which the Germans had mined all of Italy, his fear becomes overwhelming and he cannot work anymore (280). Instead of working to defuse all of the bombs when Naples was evacuated, Kip crumbles under pressure and stops worrying about