A Bleak Look at Trying to Survive in the Middle of a War

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Over the course of a couple of hours with This War of Mine, I’d stolen food and medicine from an elderly couple, hidden behind a door and watched a soldier drag a young woman off with him to be raped, and stood uselessly by whilst one of the people I was supposed to be helping to survive died in her bed because I couldn’t find any medicine. I also burned a treasured collection of books that a stranger had left with me for safekeeping, in order to stay warm. Shamefully, I actually felt worse about that last thing than I did about robbing the elderly couple; symbolically, there are few things more hopeless than burning books. And in my head, that elderly couple didn’t stand much of a chance at surviving anyway. That’s the kind of thinking that This War of Mine provoked in me: selfish, morbid, ruthlessly utilitarian. I was shocked at myself.