Adrian's Reviews > The War of the End of the World

** spoiler alert ** While I like Llosa due to his multiple chronological threading writing style and the strain it puts on the reader's brain when trying to figure out who does what and when , this book is not like that .

This book is about a religious fanatic that uses his assertiveness to draw people from all walks of life including thieves, murderers, rapists , sick , orphans and old from all over Brazil mainland villages and bring them together on a mountain to build a civilisation which opposes the newly formed Brazilian republic , politics , imperial units of measurement.

The gonverment sends 3 military expeditions (20 ,100 and then 1000 people) to.cull this cult each with the same disastrous result.
The soldiers are massacred , cut to pieces , their heads hung on spikes.

In this place and under the leader's influence , the murderers turn to generals that protect the place , the thieves to scouts , a baby killer female becomes the nun etc....

Under the leader's influence these broken people start to show solidarity , love , kindness and compassion for themselves.

Looking from an outside perspective , these same people including young teens , show no remorse to anybody that tries to.interfere with their community. They fight gonverment forces , burn army supply locations , go onto suicidal errands. Mothers jump.with their babies in the fires then be caught by army forces.

My dilemma:
Is it moral to fix a broken man , give him a sense of purpose in life , make him a valuable part of society given the fact that that society harms anybody not belonging to it ?