The protagonist and narrator of The Forever War, Mandella is drafted into military service because of his “elite” knowledge—he a graduate with a physics degree who simply wants to teach. He is smart enough to distrust military bureaucracy and to see its rhetoric for the propaganda it is. He doesn’t understand the war beyond what the military and UNEF tells him, claims about which he is instinctively skeptical. Once the military has him, however, he becomes first and foremost a soldier. His emotionally detached tone throughout most of the narrative suggests not so much a casual attitude toward killing but rather a defense mechanism. Military training instills such detachment out of necessity, and Mandella uses it to great advantage. His survival is a combination of emotional distance, skill, knowledge, and luck. Even his fear and uncertainty are couched in a cool and aloof manner. When he expresses doubts about his leadership abilities, those doubts are matter-of-fact assertions rather than hand-wringing equivocations.

Mandella’s impassive exterior, however, conceals an empathetic soul. Like Margay Potter, he has no intrinsic love for killing. During his platoon’s first encounter with the Taurans, he refuses to randomly kill a herd of indigenous creatures simply because they are alien and unfamiliar.