Ruined. Destroyed. Damaged.

Rape. The destruction of women. Emotionally. Physically. Mentally.

It’s brutality. It’s torture. It’s uncalled for. It’s unnatural.

These men are heartless, vicious, uncaring, cruel, evil.

Rape is probably the hardest topic for me to deal with because it has happened to someone very close to my heart. Every time it comes up, whether in a serious manner or as a joke among friends, it hurts because I know that many people live with the memories of such a horrible thing, and people don’t take it as seriously as it should be taken. People no longer use the word rape as how it is meant to be used, but rather as a joke, saying they’ve beaten someone or done better than someone. They’re taking the other side of it. Not as the victim, but as the victor. Rape is not a joke. It hurts people. It changes them. It destroys their bodies…their lives. It destroys them completely. They can never be the same.

When I read the play Ruined, it made me feel so strongly against the vicious soldiers, I wanted to kill them all for ever hurting a woman like that. Throughout the book, I had tears in my eyes, hoping for something good to happen, for the violence and terror to stop. Sophie was not only raped, but destroyed. With a bayonet.

Every rape victim is destroyed: Ruined.

Mama Nadi’s house is a place for these girls to stay and be safe, and although they still must perform sexual favors for the men that come in, it keeps them alive. Mama Nadi never takes a side in the war, and she and her girls serve any men who come in. Although she never wanted Sophie because she was ruined, she took her in, I think, because she knew that she herself was ruined too, and that she was no better than Sophie.

Mama Nadi and the girls create a sort of makeshift family, staying together through the hard times of war, and although they are all different, they are all in the same position. Ruined shows the difficulty of a family in wartime, as does Lars Noren’s play, War, in which a family struggles through the absence of their father during a war. In Ruined, however, the “family” at Mama Nadi’s house is thrown together because of horrible circumstances.

Both Sophie and Salima are given some sort of false hope in the play, that things will get better, but their hopes become ruined. Sophie wants surgery to get better and is given the opportunity by Mama, who gives Mr. Harari her diamond to take Sophie to a doctor. But Mr. Harari leaves without Sophie, and Sophie no longer has the opportunity. Salima, in the beginning wants to go back to her husband and her town, but once she finds out she is pregnant, she knows that there is no way of returning and being welcome; Not even when her husband comes to find her.

But who would want to go to a man who blames you for being raped?

Mama Nadi is the only one who tries to stay realistic throughout the play. She doesn’t believe in fairy tales or happily-ever-afters. She is a pessimist to the extreme, but she manages to keep herself sane through her will to survive the war. Throughout the play, she is strongly determined to make it through the war. her brothel house is her protection. By not taking sides in the war and by owning a business, she cannot be taken down by the soldiers, because she services them. She tricks them into giving her extra coltan, knowing that it is valuable. Everything she does is to survive. It’s her natural instinct for survival. In such hard times, without that instinct, you’re dead.

Dead-which is what all these girls would have been had Mama Nadi not taken them in and kept them safe.

The end of the play, although it was shocking, wasn’t completely inconceivable. The fact that Mama and Cristian got together was a secret desire throughout the play, and when she admitted to being ruined also, it was shocking, but it made sense. I finally realized why she didn’t want Sophie, and why she was always secretly sympathetic to the girls. She understood them more than anyone knew, and she was just like them.

Ruined was a very emotionally pulling story of wartime, and because the girls were so interrelated and their pasts were so graphic, it is hard not to feel in a sense connected to them. It is hard not to feel their pain and suffering when it is so clearly presented to you through detailed examples and terrible stories of their torture.

The worst part of it all is that even though this was only a play, rapes like the ones told in Ruined happen all the time, every day. No one pays attention. No one cares. Because it’s not them. They don’t have to deal with the pain or the suffering. This play, even though it was strong and impacting, will make the readers feel badly for a while after reading, but then they’ll forget.

How can you forget. How can you forget that things like this happen every day. That to someone, it’s happening right now? The victims are destroyed. They are damaged. They are Ruined.