Brett Neveu (1970) is one of the distinctive voices of the contemporary American theatre. Through his plays, Brett Neveu appears to be a dramatist who is very much concerned with everything related to his country and society. Most of his works apparently deal with issues of national importance, including violence, the consequences of 2001 attacks, family disintegration, and the legacy of slavery. Neveu holds himself responsible for condemning the violence that goes through the American subconscious. Neveu not only denounces the violence that his country commits elsewhere in the world, as portrayed in the trilogy, but also the domestic violence that Americans perpetrate against one other. He wants to stress that violence has become an inseparable part of the American character, even the young, due to their violent and conflict-laden history full of wars and battles. He sees wars as sins that will inevitably keep devastating the whole world. Neveu is seemingly seeking to discuss with the audience the emotional and psychological damage that the war can inflict upon Americans. Through Harmless (2016) which is as an anti-war drama that generally censures the American war against Iraq and emphasizes its ugliness and savagery , Neveu's message is that war is dehumanizing, man is the victim of its absurdity, injustices, and fatal consequences, and that peace is the lasting and most convenient ideology for living. This study attempts to trace the war’s dehumanizing impacts and traumatic effects on soldiers who have been misled by the alleged grandeur of war and deceived by the fake ideals of patriotism and sacrifice. In particular, it is the dramatist’s means to portray and shed light on the mental suffering of the returning soldiers whose pre- and post-war lives have turned totally different and their internal war seems to come to no end.
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