Since the beginning of time, the world has only been in peace a total of 268 years (Hedges). While many argue that war is part of human nature, the devastation that war brings is the greatest shame of humanity. Once the war has ended, however, the psychological and emotional trauma one experiences after witnessing the atrocities and violence, especially as a child, are the most damaging of all. In Felipe Quintanilla’s “Rainy Night” and Lorne Shirinian’s “Hide and Seek”, both Mario and Anahid exhibit this psychological and emotional trauma caused by childhood-witnessed physical violence from wars in their respective countries of origin, and are depicted as struggling with irrational fear of death, chronic nightmarish visions, and inescapable thoughts of lost loved ones.…show more content… In “Rainy Night”, Mario’s primary fear is the belief that the murderers that killed his brother during the El Salvadorian War would return for him. This can be outlined by his middle-of-the-night phone call to his wife, in irrational and child-like panic, after being spooked by his perception of “suspicious” movements of a car in his convenience store’s parking lot (Quintanilla 90). This exemplifies Mario’s psychological oversensitivity, caused by witnessing the physical violence of the civil war. Despite him being in Canada for a decade now and the war being long over, as his wife Dolores futilely tries to explain over the phone, Mario still greatly suffers from this fear (Quintanilla