Area 1 – Perception When the bomb technician Will James comes to the Bravo Company in Iraq, his teammates don’t know anything about him. They can only start knowing him from what he says and what he does. One teammate Sanborn thinks that James is a person who likes to act alone. Sanborn uses his experience and what he has seen from James to get the perception that James is a ‘redneck trailer trash’. This is an example of “perception” (the process of attending to, organizing, and interpreting the information that we receive through our senses, page 38). Also, when James first comes to the team, before his first mission, another teammate Owen thinks that James is just a new guy. Owen tries to scare James by saying it’s very dangerous in Iraq. But James replies that he has seen a lot in Afghanistan, which is also a very dangerous place. Owen then realizes that his perception of James is not right. This is an example of “perception check” (sharing one’s perception of another’s behavior to see if the interpretation is accurate, page 49). Without knowing too much about James, Owen just uses his words to test if James is like what he perceives. James buys DVDs from an Iraqi boy; he likes the boy and plays soccer with him. But the boy later is killed by terrorists. James believes the boy’s boss is a spy. Even another soldier tells him that all the merchants in that area are checked, he still believes what he wants to believe: the boss must be a bad guy. Then he follows the person and tries to find who is responsible. This is an example of “selective perception” (distortion that arises from paying attention only to what we expect to see or hear and from ignoring what we don’t expect, page 45). James is so sad and his feelings distort his perception, he just sees the DVD man suspicious even that man acts just normally. James and his wife divorced. But his wife didn’t leave him and when James goes back to U.S, they still live together as a happy family. They do shopping together and cooking together. But James is somehow feeling empty at home. He tells his little son that he only has one thing left that he loves, which I think it is his job as the bomb technician. At the beginning of the film, there is a quote from Chris Hedges, ‘war is a drug’. War is a need in James’ life; he is addicted to it just like an addiction to drug. So he gives up his wife and his son and everything else and chooses to go back to Iraq. James’ feeling is an example o