Need for Change

Sontag kind of makes me feel embarassed to be an American. She depicts most Americans as close-minded, unsympathetic, self-centered individuals who will never truly understand other cultures and people-"An American has no way of incorporating Vietnam into his consciousness" She says that any person who visits Vietnam has the task of trying to "understand what one is nevertheless barred from understanding" Seeing the Vietnamese people be so understanding and welcoming in such a time of hardship and destruction showed her how drastically different our culture is. She feels America has "betray[ed] its ideals," (which is how I'm sure many felt about America during this time of war) But I think she feels this way not only because of the war, but in general thinks America needs to drastically change. She does have hope that this change will occur-"Increasing numbers of people do realize that we must have a more generous, more humane way of being with each other; and great, probably convulsive, social changes are needed to create these psychic changes." But the realization that it needs to occur, and it actually happening are two very different things- I mean, its been over 40 years, have we changed?

Culture shock

What caught my attention when reading "Trip to Hanoi" is how long and difficult it was for the author to adjust to the culture shock of being in Vietnam. She said that "North Vietnam was unreal the first night. But it continued to seem unreal, or at least incomprehensible, for days afterwards." Aside from the vastly different culture she is immersed in, there is another reason why she sees everything as unreal. Because of the Vietnam War and the devastation it has caused to the land through bombings, she sees the Vietnamese carrying on their lives as if the war had not impacted their lives that much. She was expecting a war torn Vietnam whose people would stone her at the very moment of seeing an American. Instead, she was treated the exact opposite. People stared at her in amazement. She ate fine and was sheltered comfortably and became an honored guest at every home she visited. One of the best examples is when her travel guide stops at a burial site of an American pilot. She is told that the locals wanted to give a proper respectful burial for the pilot after the Vietnamese shot him down. Immediately, she wonders why would they do such a thing. Why would you bury someone who dropped a bomb on your people and caused so much damage to your country? She could not comprehend it at all. "What I'd been creating and enduring for the last four years was a Vietnam inside my head, under my skin, in the pit of my stomach. But the Vietnam I'd been thinking about for years was scarcely filled out at all." The unrealness she experienced in Vietnam was the collision of what she thought she was expecting versus the reality of Vietnam.

Trip to Hanoi

I found it very interesting that while reading the beginning of this article it appeared as if the writer had knowledge of rhetoric, this became more and more obvious as terms such as rhetoric, pathos, and decorum were continually used. This article definitely spoke to my emotions, exactly as it intended to do. Although it was not obvious, I believe that the author was using rhetoric for an argument against the war. We are aware from the beginning that he is an anti-war demonstrator but throughout the reading he is not straight forwardly telling us that we should oppose the war as well, instead he is using subtleties that spark our emotions. What really made me sympathize for the Vietnamese people was the description of the grave set up for the American pilot died after having his plane shot down. When the author wrote how the Vietnamese people "have had spouses and parents and children murdered by this pilot and his comrades" it reminded me of the scene from Platoon in which Joker was in a helicopter watching a fellow marine taking aim at all the citizens below. Many of the American soldiers, pilots, etc. have been portrayed as heartless "killing machines", yet as mentioned in this reading, the people in the city where the pilot was shot down at created a beautiful grave in his memory, regardless of the possible killings of their people that he was responsible for. It did not matter whether they forgave or even pitied him, they were simply doing what they felt was the right and "humane" thing to do. I am sure that this evoked the emotions of many readers, obviously what the author was trying to do and it clearly worked for me.

Another element of the reading that appealed to me was the differences described between Americans and the Vietnamese. At first the author states how it appears as if all the people of this foreign country seem almost identical in his opinion. They all talk the same, act the same, and hold the same values. He believed it was almost impossible to have a conversation with them, not only because of the language barrier but because they as a foreign people could simply not understand the points he made and where he was coming from. The author's understanding of Vietnam and the war before traveling to the country itself was a main reason for his ignorance, one that many Americans must have shared as well, but slowly the author realized that his assumptions were wrong. He states how everything became much clearer to him as he "became less occupied with the constrictions of their language and with the reduction of my own resources of expressions". Once he was able to look past the cultural barrier and open his eyes to the new people that he was dealing with, he could see that the Vietnamese were not all the same people and that their almost prude-like personalities were the result of a tame and understanding culture that a large majority of the Vietnamese people held. After watching the different war movies it was a breath of fresh air to read an article that was anti-war. It gave me a new outlook on the war and a new respect for the Vietnamese people.

Trip to Hanoi

After reading Trip to Hanoi, I was honestly shocked on how open-minded many of the Vietnamese people could be with the Americans who are attempting to destroy their country with mass destruction at the same time. The Vietnamese people are somehow about to trust the Americans and believe that they are doing whatever they can to help. Even those Americans visiting Hanoi for the anti-war movement are not asked what it is that they do to help, but instead they are treated with politeness and respect. The story takes place during the most brutal time of the war, yet the people from Vietnam are able to say, "We know the American people are our friends. Only the present American government is our enemy" (215). They are standing up for the American people by believing that the government is their only enemy, although in Platoon, it is clearly shown that the soldiers felt no obligations to stand up for the Vietnamese people despite what side they were on. Santog can't help but wonder how they could be so naive about the Americans. I felt just as bewildered as Santog because I could not figure out where their ideas were coming from. I expected the Vietnamese people to place all the blame on the Americans whether they claimed to be a part of the anti-war movement or not because that is what Americans tend to do. Instead Santog and her three companions are being "thanked for [their] unsolicited efforts" (214). They treat the Americans with such gratitude that it almost makes you feel guilty because you know that Americans as a whole would never return such a favor. These acts of kindness push Santog further and further away from understanding their culture because she doesn't want to believe that Vietnamese genuinely do have faith in the Americans.

Trip to Hanoi

I found the Vietnamese interest in American culture truly puzzling. Regardless of the fact that the Americans visiting Hanoi didn’t support the war, they still came from the place that was single-handily responsible for the destruction of the Vietnamese land and the death of their people. It was ironic that the Vietnamese so willingly welcomed their “enemy,” knowing that if I were in that situation, the last thing I would be is welcoming. But we as Americans are supposedly superior. The passage states, “It seems to me a defect that North Vietnamese aren’t good enough haters. How else to explain the fact that they actually appear to be quite fond of America?” Dr. Tach’s great interest in American science and technology was also ironic, considering that the science and technology is what created the weapons used against his country. This example really does make the Vietnamese sound naïve, but then the passage continued on to state that “there respect for the United States is there, whether voiced or not.” Once again, this brought me back to the American mindset of superiority. Americans are so involved in themselves, while the Vietnamese are able to appreciate cultures other than their own. Who truly is the most superior?

How can the Vietnamese be so calm and content with themselves, believing that “life is full of joy” when they have experienced so much disaster? America may be the most superior when it comes to tangible ideas such as lifestyle and technology, but the Vietnamese are perfectly content (even more so than Americans who “have everything”) with so little. With this, I believe that Americans have a lot to learn from the Vietnamese.

Shortly after finishing Trip to Hanoi I felt that it was necessary to see the condition of the Americans and Vietnamese during the certain time. To my surprise, Susan Sontag’s voyage to Hanoi took place in 1968, which was marked by the Tet Offensive, otherwise known as the climax of the war. This was a time that was filled with a number of attacks from the Americans that were knocking down and killing nearly everything in sight. It is important to note that Sontag was completely against what was occurring in Vietnam. She felt that she was “Made miserable and angry for your years by knowledge of the excruciating suffering of the Vietnamese people at the hands of my own government.” The anti-war approach Sontag presents is filled with love and admiration in the beginning, but as time progressed she feels immensely disconnected. She talks about how Americans are looked at as “cac ban,” meaning friends. This reveals the state of mind that most Vietnamese held, with the exception of the American government, which is noted as the “enemy.” As her trip continues Sontag notes, “There is a barrier I can’t cross. I’m overcome by how exotic the Vietnamese are-impossible for us to understand them, clearly impossible for them to understand us.” This feeling is continuous from the point that she realizes that there is a significant different between the two countries. She feels as “someone from a “big” culture visiting a “little” culture.” Sontag finds it hard to sympathize with the Vietnamese in the midst of the piece because of the gap between the two cultures.

The effort that Susan Sontag extended towards this work was simply amazing. The reality of the situation was that she was placed in a different part of the world, from a country of freedom attempting to get a feel for what exactly was occurring in what was presented to the American public as a “hostile country.” She was able to present the fact that the Vietnamese are the same innocent people, trying to survive on a daily basis from a harsh and merciless American government in a well-constructed literary piece.

Why America Lost

The reasons that make Vietnam a better place to live in Sontag’s eyes in “Trip to Hanoi” are the reasons Americans could not win the war against Vietnam. The people of North Vietnam loved their government and had complete faith in it, while half of America protested its government and the other half certainly didn’t “love” it. The Vietnamese treated their enemies with respect as if they their lives were worth as much as their own, even giving prisoners more food rations than they gave themselves. Americans would never do this, and as seen in Platoon, Americans didn’t even treat non-military Northern villagers with respect. The Vietnamese also had “unlimited and creative devotion to work” (251), while Americans were wasteful, lazy, and uncreative. Because of these differences Americans saw no purpose of fighting and did not try to find one, while the Vietnamese at least were united in their patriotism for their country and government and willing to put effort into creative ways of defeating America. For Americans, it was very difficult to achieve a goal that they did not have.

The thing that I find most sad about Sontag’s “Trip to Hanoi” is that America today is still the same “western culture”, if not worse, compared to the Vietnam that Sontag describes. As Sontag talks about on page 270, America loosing the war could be a “turning point […] or it could mean virtually nothing”. It is obvious that the war ended up meaning nothing. Yes individuals who lost their loved ones were left with a hole where that person used to be. However, this did not change their ethics, increase their patriotism, or make them more sincere people. The America we live in today still has a “tarnished idea of patriotism” (267), is still “an unethical society”(224), and is still complex, even words are “ironic” and not spoken with “honesty and sincerity”(238). Until Americans realize these faults and radically strive to change them, winning any wars will most likely prove problematic.

Trip to Hanoi

Upon reading Trip to Hanoi, I was particularly intrigued by one point that Sontag brings up near the beginning of the piece. Specifically, the entry I am focusing on is May 7^th. In this entry, Sontag brings to light that war has been imbedded into the Vietnamese culture for generations. In the text, Sontag states that the region that is now named Vietnam has had “four thousand years of continuous history, more than two thousand years of being overrun by foreign aggressors” (219). It is out of this constant state of turnover that Sontag sees Vietnamese culture as stagnant. Sontag states “repetition confers value on something. It is a positive moral style” (221). The differences seen between Vietnamese culture and American culture is that America has “variety.” This doesn’t mean that Vietnamese culture is wrong, but it is often seen this way by naïve and ignorant foreigners. Their lack of variety is in itself what defines Vietnamese culture. Their heritage has revolved around exposure to these violent and oppressive segments of history, and It wasn’t until the time period in which this piece was written that Vietnam began to grow. Unfortunately, America saw Vietnam’s growth as nothing more as a Communist attempt to corrupt a malleable country. It is obvious that neither the Vietnamese culture or the American Culture will understand each other. Sontag mentions this numerous times, and it is because of this lack of understanding that leads people to question whether or not we had the authority to intervene in a culture we didn’t understand.

With this in mind, I believe that the message that Sontag was trying to convey was that America tended to generalize all North Vietnamese people as the enemy, when in actuality they are people who are also just trying to get through the war in one peace. Just because they were geographically linked to the enemy, doesn’t mean they were linked ideologically. During her stay in Vietnam, Sontag writes to her audience in order to expose them to the respectful and reasonable people that inhabit North Vietnam. She gives many examples of their level-headedness and respect, and her message for a desire for peace is evident throughout the entire essay.

Trip to Hanoi

When reading Trip to Hanoi, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of utopia from Susan Sontag’s description of Hanoi. My first sense of this utopia arises when Sontag invokes a detachment of history from “intellectual concern” and begins to portray history as one used for “survival.” She then goes further to invoke pathos by mentioning that “even more than the Jews” the Vietnamese have suffered. She chose a people who still deal with issues pertaining to their culture (especially the “ownership” of land). In the earlier portions of her journal, she does mention that “[she] could live in Vietnam, or an ethical society like this one –but not without the loss of a big part of [herself].” Her statement is twofold: that America is not an ethical society, and that she is so immersed in an unethical society that she cannot leave it. This leads to an increase of “trust” and even builds her decorum as one who lacks the means to have lived in an ethical society , she can view the ethical world with a sense of longing and desire. She still expresses how “there isn’t much an American radical can learn from the Vietnamese revolution.” However as the entries progress so does her attitude toward the people especially watching the burial of a fallen pilot. Her use of rhetorical questions creates a sense of empathy like a new-born first witnessing their scene of color and wonder. Her tone shifts when talking about sexual restraint and how the western world lacks it. Overall her emphasis on empathy, personal connection, and virtuous revelation all lead to a more effective understanding of this Sontag’s point of view.
One of the most interesting facts I pulled from the article was that “Ly Thuong Kiet, was a poet as well and used his poems to rouse the Vietnamese people to take up arms just like Ho Chi Minh.” General Patton had to use rousing empathy and colloquial vernacular to arouse his men, but with lyrical style I wonder what diction he would have had to use to convince and persuade his soldiers to move.

A misunderstood revolution of love and trust

The Vietnamese were misunderstood, if not because Americans did not try or could not succeed in trying to. A westerner needs lots of time to grasp, just a little of a culture so different from that of their own.
Facts do not tell the entire story of Vietnam. Brief encounters do not either. Rather, long extended stays could only begin to scratch the surface of Vietnam's culture. "I already knew a great deal; and I could not hope to collect more or significantly better information in a mere two weeks than was already available." Doing this is hard enough, and with preset mindsets formed from American propaganda or from writers that didn't fully grasp their experience or audiences that couldn't fully grasp by reading alone makes it even more difficult when you can't overlook them immediately. "Indeed, the problem was that Vietnam had become so much a fact of my conciousness as an American that I was having enormous difficulty getting it outside my head." The author goes on to admit after arriving he new nothing exept from a 'distance.'
Overtime one should overcome right? However, many things get in the way as one tries to understand another culture. Language for one, "it seems to me we're both talking baby talk." This refers to the minimum he had to talk in english to someone in Hanoi for them to both understand. These were his first impressions, but he hadn't noticed subtleties yet just his preset condition of his mind, "eveyone seems to talk in the same style." He became baffled by the Vietnamese admiration for American Democracy, their kindness to American's and how they understood, "only the present government of America is (their) enemy," not Americans. It was a third dimension that was missing from his interactions with the Vietnamese that kept him from understanding them more. A dimension one would have to have learned only by growing up as a Vietnamese person, for they developed different subtleties in their styles, speech, nuances different from American's and westerners. For instance, they don't have words to fulfill irony based speech. A different kind of politeness, more meaningful than American's which, " for us, politeness means conventions of amiable behavior people have agreed to practice, because their real feelings aren't consistently civil," and it has created irony in our chilvary because politeness is "never truly honest." The Vietnamese are nice to the Americans because they mean it. They understand us more than we understand them because we are our form of politeness, that which lacks meaning and contains irony. "By definition, politeness is never truly honest, it testifies to the disparity between social behavior and authentic feeling."
Did we really want to help the Vietnamese or to prevent the spread of Communism? Did we mean what we said to them more than Ho Chi Minh? In the end, being truthful won out maybe to the Vietnamese by definitely to the author, and to him, possibly the American soldiers who didn't want to be there hurting them after being experiencing their politeness and thusly, "in him the 'revolution' has just started," and after leaving Vietnam, "it continues."

Hanoi: The Truth

Upon reading a “Trip to Hanoi”, I had to reread my Vietnamese history in order to get a sense of what was happening in Vietnam when Susan Sontag was visiting Hanoi. 1968 was the year of a turning point in Vietnam. It was during this time that the Tet Offensive shocked America and displayed the NVA tenacity and persistence in the Vietnam War. The context of Sontag’s trip is important because it represented a time where the tension in the US against the war was at its peak and liberal sympathizers, such as Sontag herself, were a large part of American society.

An interesting and honest observation that Sontag makes during her trip to Hanoi is that things were not a “ideal” as the sensationalized image of their trip created in the liberal atmosphere in the US. She likened her arrival to Hanoi as “meeting a favorite movie star, one who for years has played a role in one’s fantasy life, and finding the actual person so much smaller, less vivid, less erotically charged, and mainly different.” The expectations of heartfelt exchanges, sympathy, and compassion were all withered away by the language barrier and the disconnect that she felt with the North Vietnamese people. Although she believed her “sense of solidarity with the Vietnamese” was “genuine and felt”, she realized the truth of the matter is that it was “developed at a great distance from them”. In many ways the culture gap prevented Sontag from communicating the things she felt for the Vietnamese people, and she experienced the harsh contrast between presumptuous expectations and reality.

The American Pilot

The passage from "Trip to Hanoi" that touched me the most was the one of the burial of the American pilot. The Vietnamese villagers took the body of this pilot (who no doubt had bombed the same village) and gave him a respectful burial with sculpture of the dissembled airplane and flowers. I asked myself, would I do this?
I don't think that I would. If there was a foreign invader shooting up my neighborhood who crashed his airplane, I'd probably just let him rot. It's amazing to me that the genuineness of this Eastern culture ensured that the American have respect? or forgiveness? enough to have a proper beautiful piece of this earth.
These gestures that differ so much from the American way of thinking confuse me. The author points out that this is a "culture founded on guilt." Do they think that they somehow deserve the ravage that America is impounding on their country? So, is this the reason that they buried that pilot? As a thank you for killing and demolishing everyone and everything in their path?
When reading about Eastern culture and religion, I tend to question Western ideals. In the book, The Tao of Psychology: Sinchronicity and Self, the author outlines the idea of sinchronicity. It is a hard concept to grasp when thinking in the ways that Westerners tend to think. I like to think of it as when two events happen casually, by chance, and occur together in a spiritual or meaningful manner. I'd like to think that these villagers were moved by this event of the crashing airplane. Maybe the burial of this pilot was a movement by the villagers in a spiritual manner that is just not meant to be understood by us. But, by chance, this author came across this grave and made it a point to write about his experiences with the site. And by chance we read about it in this class. Maybe these meaningful occurances were supposed to happen like they did in sinchronicity.
Eastern thought is so different than what Westerners think of as logic. How can we even begin to understand the Vietnamese perspective of the War in Vietnam without understanding how they think?

Cultural Differences in Trip to Hanoi

In my opinion, one of the most interesting wars throughout history was WWII in that it was fought on two different fronts: Europe and the Pacific. The Nazis were obviously brutal—the SS segment witnessed the mass murder of millions of Jews and other minority groups. As a whole, however, the Germans were easier to fight because they were more “westernized” in both tactics and culture and thus they were more familiar to us. We considered the Japanese, on the other hand, to be completely barbaric in their war strategies and deliverance. This is stemmed from cultural differences, which is why I find it interesting that the writer from Trip to Hanoi, despite his anti-war sentiments and North Vietnamese sympathy, discusses his cultural adjustments as one of his central focuses. I believe that is partly because of such cultural differences that Americans fighting in Southeast Asia found the conditions to be so miserable; for the writer himself says that “the cultural difference is the hardest thing to estimate, to overcome.”

You would expect that an obviously left-leaning writer would be politically correct in every way he sees fit, yet this author goes as far as to call the Vietnamese people “children—beautiful, patient, heroic, martyred, stubborn children” while he argues that he himself is not a child. I find it ironic that he travels to Hanoi to learn from the North Vietnamese yet spends a good portion of his account criticizing them, the people who he admires politically. He goes on to state that “[it is] impossible for us to understand them, clearly impossible for them to understand us.” This makes you wonder that if an American who is unbelievably ready to agree with and learn from the North Vietnamese even has difficulty communicating with them, was it a joke for America to fool herself into believing that she could ever defend a society that her conservative masses have nothing in common with? The most perplexing aspect that results from Trip To Hanoi is what can cause such cultural boundaries when both parties want to befriend one another? Is Vietnamese culture simply too different than ours?

Hanoi

Sontag's trip to Vietnam as described in her essay, shows the overlooked mentality of the North Vietnamese people that were often considered the enemy, even though they most of them treated the Americans as friends. This really is the greatest achievement of her piece on Vietnam. It disproves almost all of the assumptions made by the American public around 1968 and helps paint a picture of the real Vietnam culture.

During her trip, she describes how the Vietnamese took the American pilot and gave him a traditional burial, even though he was the enemy and was helping to destroy their village. Not only did the people bury him, they erected a shrine-like memorial, as if he was an important person in the village. This kind of action shows how vastly different our cultures are, especially when it comes to how we treat our enemies. Many Americans assumed, including the author herself, that the North Vietnamese people were just an insignificant occupant of a nation under attack by communism. They continuously overlooked how kind and passionate the vietnamese actually are.

Scenes

In Full Metal Jacket, the opening scene was much more personal than Platoon's. It was more personal because it showed dehumanizing process of training camp soldiers go through. For example, at the very beginning when the soldiers' heads are shaved, the look on their faces is saddening. I can imagine what they are thinking. "What in the hell am I getting myself into?" The camera close up also contributes to my point. It's a sad sight to see really.

In Platoon, the way scenes are shot by the director's camera influences the realistic feel of the overall movie. During the scene where the chopper comes to pick up the injured and dead, I noticed how the camera pans with the soldiers as the uninjured soldiers carried the injured and dead ones aboard. It's a powerful scene because it's what you would probably see in a real war. Also, the scene where William Defoe dies and Charlie Sheen is on the chopper and turns his head to look at Wolf is crucial. The close up is so up front that you can see the rage in Sheen's eyes. I guess my point is that the way camera techniques are executed in Platoon makes the movie so much more realistic than Full Metal Jacket.

kubrick

When I was watching Full Metal Jacket for the first time I was at my brother's apartment. He told me that this was a "sick movie." Stanley Kubrick's movies have never ceased to surprise me in the past so I was all for it. I also saw Clockwork Orange with my brother. Kubrick seems to have a way of making social commentary in his films in a non-discreet manner. He tackled the mental challenges that the soldiors faced by showing those stuggles. In Clockwork Orange he tackled gang violence and sex by showing just that. I think that Kubrick's first love of photography is evident in his films by the artistic and deliberate camera angles and close up shots of his characters. Kubrick is not afraid of controversy. His films radiate with sex, violence, and gore. In Full Metal Jacket, it was necessary to show the deep emotions of his characters to get the full effect of the Vietnam war had on these men in the marines. In Clockwork Orange, his message would not have been near as strong without the graphic scenes of rape and sex and violence. Like the main character of Full Metal Jacket, Kubrick saw the war in the eyes of a photographer. He saw the images of the war that portrayed the feelings that were here in America. He captured the irony in having a message written on a helmet "born to kill" with a necklace of a peace sign. This, I think, was pointing out the confusion that Lot 49 pointed out.

Machines

Machines. As discussed in class, these are beings that run solely on logic, follow orders to the tee, and rely solely on the commands of their operators. To many in the military, this is the ultimate vision of a soldier. To become a killing machine, a body without thought. The films Platoon and Full Metal Jacket both convey similar themes of the dehumanizing nature of war, but through different styles of film direction and character development.
The opening scene of Platoon throws the actor Charlie Sheen directly into Vietnam. As a haze falls around him, he begins to observe his surroundings and is greeted by the body bags that are being carried onto the carrier he just exited. During this scene, Stone focuses in on the faces of the other soldiers that Charlie Sheen is staring at, most notably is the face of one hardened old man. The face is dirty and stern, and the eyes that Taylor stares into are tired and encircled by black. The scene presents the effects of Vietnam on the young soldiers coming into Vietnam. Seemingly there are only ways a soldier leaves Vietnam, in a body bag or emotionally scarred by the horrors of war. In this scene, Stone presents his method of expanding the character development of Taylor through his point of view.
This contrasts with Kubrick’s method in the beginning of Full Metal Jacket. In the boot camp, the cadets are all part of a unit, all on a mission to become “killing machines”. Although their emotions and personalities are deconstructed, Vietnam is still far away. This allows Kubrick to display the effects of the “process” into two different ways. On one side, the harsh conditions and pressure to cast away humanity drives Gomer Pyle into a psychotic state. In his final scene, the close up on Gomer Pyle’s eyes reveals the vacancy that he has forced into himself. The consequences of Pyle’s efforts serve as a foil to Joker’s resistance to change in boot camp. Despite Hartmann’s attempts to break him down, Joker stands his ground and is firm in his own beliefs about authority and the war.
In this respect, Taylor and Joker are shown to be two very different characters. Taylor’s motivation is revealed because he doesn’t know “why only the poor have to fight” and is later motivated by anger and revenge in their final battle. Joker’s motivation to fight, however, remains hazy throughout the film. This is best displayed at the conclusions of both films. In Platoon, the film ends with Taylor finally getting his revenge and heading home from the war. Although he notes that, “the war inside him is never over”, the audience is still left with a sense of closure that Taylor is finally heading home. Contrary in Full Metal Jacket, the fare of Joker after they regroup is left uncertain. Kubrick deliberately chooses to film this scene very darkly lit and hiding the faces of the soldiers. Joker is lost in the sea of soldier’s singing along to the “Mickey Mouse Club” and a sense of closure is never reached. By the leaving the audience unsure, Kubrick effectively mirrors US sentiments to the Vietnam War. Like Joker, the motivations of our role in Vietnam are unsure and even when departing from Vietnam, the necessity of accomplishment is never met.

Platoon and Full Metal Jacket

Both Platoon and Full Metal Jacket fully embrace one ideal that FMJ so explicitly stated: “war is hell.” The emphasis of death in each of the movies especially in the war scenes represents a message of fear and devastation that I feel the directors wanted to emphasize.
Death in the opening scene foreshadowed much of the ensuing combat that would result in Platoon. The dead bodies that are carried in front of Taylor show exactly the devastation and the cost of the war. Though there are many veterans, Barnes states it best that “everybody gotta die sometime, Red.” The mood and the tone are set from the initial outset that any of the characters in front could be dead throughout the movie. On the other hand, death is not such a heavy onset in FMJ despite the nature of the war. The first death is of Hartman and Pyle, casualties resulting from the Pyle’s depression and psychoses, gradually building toward the Tet offensive and eventual death of Cowboy. It isn’t until Cowboys dies that I earnestly felt a sense of fear in the war. Even though, FMJ developed more personality and journey with Joker, watching as he went through training camp and through his assignments, it was easier to view from an objective view the horrors of the war especially when the door gunner kills all Vietnamese that he sees. Even the final scene, a mercy killing is that was delivered gave more relief. Platoon felt more of subjective view on the treatment of the war. The burning of the village, the murdering of the village head’s wife, and the attempted rape all show that without empathy it would be difficult to understand why or how these events could unfold.
Platoon ends with a retreat, the death of Barnes and an overall feeling of sorrow at a war that shouldn’t have been fought while FMJ ends with the same sense juxtaposed with a Mickey Mouse March however leading to heighten the sense of remorse with irony.

Full Circle

After watching the beginning and ending of Platoon and Full Metal Jacket again, I really tried to focus on how each director presented the movie and how they tied together with each other. In Full Metal Jacket we are introduced to a close up shot of soon to be Marines getting their heads shaved. Following the haircuts we see them lined up in front of their bunks while the Drill Sargent does the usual introduction of yelling and degradation of the soldiers. We get introduced the main characters and get a brief idea of their personalities as we follow their progression as they ready themselves for war. In Platoon, we immediately go right into the heart of the battle, there is a somber presence as we see body bags, and the harsh conditions soldiers must go through in dealing with this war. The character "Joker" in Full Metal Jacket starts off in the movie as someone you don't expect to fight in a war and kill, but in the end we see that in the given situation he must put aside everything and finish his task at hand. Charlie Sheen's character at the end mentions that "We did not fight the enemy, we fought oursleves..." I think the message kubrick was trying to say was that war itself will change a person and when one enters it, he must leave behnd everything, even himself. The song he chooses in the opening scene expresses that of the soldiers leaving their lives and literally saying "Hello to Vietnam". Kubrick opens the movie the way he did to emphasize the lost of indivuality and control, he is saying that you become nothing more than a robot trained to combat. In Platoon I concluded that Stone was empahzing the result of being in the war, and how the duration of it changes a person's mentality/personality. Once you overcome the the idea that you are killing innocent people it becomes second nature and you have no emotional connection; it isn't until you leave and reflect back on what actually occured and why you did what you did that you realize you lost who you were and literally became a "robot". The ending of FMJ shows Joker killing the girl, which I thought was the turning point in which he becomes that "robot" soldier. Platoon ends with a soldier leaving the war and reverting back to his life, and FMJ displays Joker becoming the soldier that Charlie Sheen's character was.

Song Selection of Full Metal Jacket

During most movies the music selection during a particular scene foreshadows the unfolding events that will soon proceed in the movie. In the case of Full Metal Jacket, Stanley Kubrick, is able to incorporate a wide variety of music into his film that corresponds to what is about to soon occur. For example, in the beginning of the film, the song “Hello Vietnam” is played during the scene of the soldiers getting their heads shaved in preparation for the war. The chorus states: “good-bye my darling, hello Vietnam.” The hair being shaven off can symbolize the life they’re leaving behind in America and the new experiences and life they will soon have in a world surrounded by constant war. The viewer may also take note of the tone of the song, which is played at a slow pace and feeling of sadness and loss of hope. This was a feeling shared by most soldiers that were drafted into the war against their will, but in the name to serve their country. Another prime example of music selection is the song “These Boots Are Made For Walkin’.” The chorus states: “these boots are made for walkin’, and that’s just what they’ll. One of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you.” This song is able to pertain to Vietnam War significantly in the sense of America’s mentality of being more dominant than others and being able to walk over in country in their way. The viewer is then able to relate with the soldiers that they feel superior to other countries. Overall, the song selection throughout Full Metal Jacket is relevant to all scenes at the time played and facilitates the message Kubrick is conveying.

Full Metal Jacket and Platoon

Both of these movies had an interesting and effective take on the experiences soldiers had during the vietnam war. FMJ used more satirical and psychological methods while Platoon used more of the soldiers' violence toward innocent villagers, and killing in general, to portray the marines' brutality and the psychological effects of the war.

In the beginning of FMJ, we hear a joyous country song being played while the marines are getting their heads shaved. This is a great example of satire. The song in itself is a contradiction. The lyrics are talking about soldiers leaving to go die in vietnam, which is a sad thing, however, the music is upbeat and cheerful. This is a running theme throughout the movie. I think this is Kudrick's way of putting us in the soldier's mind when they are trying to escape reality. Wouldn't you want to sing a happy song in your head if you knew your life was going to be a living hell for the next few years? I know I would. Later in the movie, the same use of a tone clash is applied to the first major city battle that the marines encounter. While tanks in the background are demolishing the city, a camera crew walks by filming the scene with 'Surfin Bird' playing. Again we are taken from a state of suspense to a state of careless fun, just as the soldiers are doing. My favorite satirical moment was definitely the chopper scene where the gunner is killing any vietnamese he sees. He is doing a horrible thing by killing people that may or may not be VC, including women and children, however, he makes a joke out of it to make himself feel better. By using the fact that we never know who's a VC or not, he is able to justify the killing for himself, which is enough to stay sane most of the time. And in the midst of all this, Kudrick still finds a way to make us laugh by having the gunner say that you can kill women and children by just not leading 'em so much. The words are funny, but the action is not. I think this is the entire idea behind FMJ. It's a funny way of telling a sad story.

In Platoon, the movie is narrated by the main character that is played by Charlie Sheen, who sees all kinds of horrific acts and death across vietnam. This movie shows much more violence and killing in general than FMJ, which I think creates really a better sense of how life as a soldier really was, beyond the scope of just fighting and moving on like in FMJ. By focusing on the killing of civilians and VC and the overall constant hell the soldiers lived in, Platoon was able to portray the side of the war that FMJ did not.

Honestly, I need to watch Platoon again. But after the first watch, there just seemed to be a cheesy-ness about it, a sort of cliche feeling. (Maybe its because I dont like charlie sheen) But while some argue that it being told by his character makes it more personal, I'm not so sure. Going back and relating it to Lot 49, wasnt our confusion what made us really analyze and and connect with the story? I just think that maybe his narration made us only see his point of view, and maybe if it was left without a narrator we would be able to have our own, more personal experiences.

Because we didn't finish talking about the beginnings of the movies in class, I analyzed them more. But then Platoon's beginning compared to Full Metal Jacket's entirety is where I ended up. Both movies conveyed the transition of the Vietnam soldiers' perspective of life. However, they did it differently from one another.
Full Metal Jacket started out with country music that made you laughed because of the ironic imagery on the screen of the men getting their heads shaved, ready for boot camp. The first half of the movie was boot camp, which Platoon skipped over completely. Throughout boot camp the men slowly went from young fresh faces to young fresh faces ready for combat. They just had more confidence, until they got to Vietnam, until the transition from preparing to fighting. Platoon showed the same transition the Marines made, but rather quickly. They showed Charlie Sheen, Taylor's, face coming off the plane after landing in Vietnam and he was clean and ill informed of what was going on in the war and what he got himself into. Platoon quickly shifts to the men that have been there for a year or years, where Charlie will be eventually, but their faces are dirty and wounded. Their eyes have that "1,000 mile stare" that Marines got after finding out what the war really was. Innocent killing, death of friends, and the posibility that you could die out there. Full Metal jacket takes the whole movie to do the same thing, not until Joker contemplated killing the girl at the end did his wounded face appear.
FMJ's rhetoric of this scene in a Marines career in Vietnam was very detailed because it was the movie, Joker's transition. Platoon did this too but foreshadowed it when Taylor got off the plane in the beginning. This foreshadowing led the viewer to believe that this would happen and we watched it happen to Cherlie Sheen but in FMJ since Joker joked so much you kept thinking he wouldn't be changed by the end of the movie, it suprised me and the last scene was very hard to watch, it was very serious, which was in great contrast to Joker's personality.

The Last Scenes are Just as Important

As we discussed in class, the opening scenes of both movies are important in that they help to understand what the rest of the movie is going to be like. Similarly the last scenes of both movies are also as crucial. They provide a nice summary of what the main characters have learned and the realizations they have made along the way. The last scenes also serve another purpose; they are the last chance the movies have to make the audience think and reflect before sending them out of the theaters.
At the end of Platoon, we see soldiers dealing with the aftermath of the previous night’s battle. The camera jumps from area to area watching as soldiers clean up all the dead bodies. The insensitivity of this act is demonstrated by the fact that they were either being poured out of a flat bed truck like rubble, throw into massive pits where they seemed to accumulate in large numbers, or scooped up into bull-dozers. To me, this demonstrates the static nature of most of the soldiers. They still see their enemies as just their enemies, not as humans. This is contrasted by the few statements Chris Taylor makes as the movie draws closer to the credits. Accompanied by the remorseful and somber piece of music playing in the background, we can get a feeling for Chris’s emotions. He is unsure if he will ever be able to sort out for himself what the difference is between right and wrong in regards to war. He feels conflicted, evident when he states “As I’m sure Elias will be fighting with Barnes for what Rah called 'possession of my soul.'” This leaves the audience with the feeling that although war is a necessary evil, the soldiers don’t have to lose their humanity in order to be effective killers.
In contrast to Platoon, Full Metal Jacket wants to reaffirm its opening idea that in order to be effective soldiers, you must distance yourself from your sense of morals, and have to have the ability to obey commands. In the last scene, you see a group of soldiers walking towards their next objective, showing that there is no time to think about things that happen. Just like the beginning of the movie, the seriousness of the situation is assuaged by the fact that they are singing the “Mickey Mouse” song. Although the last twenty minutes of the movie have been grueling, the director chooses to counter the mood by having them sing this song. As for the last words, Joker admits that he is “in a world of shit, yes, but [he] is alive, and not afraid.”

Showing vs. Telling

“Show NOT tell!” These three words are ingrained in my head by my high school newspaper advisor. My years of dedication to print and broadcast journalism, along with the fact that my dad was a South Vietnamese villager during the War made the rhetorical difference between how American soldiers in Platoon and Full Metal Jacket portrayed their feelings toward the South Vietnamese stand out powerfully. While in Full Metal Jacket Kubrick creates a very interesting and innovative scene where soldiers are being interviewed about their feelings toward the “gooks”, it just does not get the same emotional response as the scene in Platoon where the soldiers come into an innocent village, brutally murder two people, and then set the village on fire.

Both Kubrick and Stone are trying to inform their audience that the American soldiers did not care about the South Vietnamese and that they were confused as to why they were even fighting for them. Stone brilliantly shows the viewer what Kubrick tried to tell. Hearing a soldier say “we’re shooting the wrong gooks”, as in Full Metal Jacket, does not leave quite the impact in the viewers mind as seeing Barns actually shoot a woman in Platoon. I had to grit my teeth as one soldier bashes in a man’s head. I actually hated all Americans who fought in Vietnam for a while after the scene. This was until I realized that Stone’s purpose was to show the choice between a man’s evil and good side when all emotion has been stripped from him. Perhaps I personally tie more sentiment to this village scene because I picture my dad, aunts, uncles, and grandparents as the villagers. What if their village had been attacked by the soldiers? At any rate, Full Metal Jacket did not conjure up any feelings of hatred for the soldiers, I merely felt sorry for them that they didn’t really know their purpose in Vietnam.

Full Metal Jacket and Platoon

As we discussed in class, I believe that the opening scenes of Platoon and Full Metal Jacket define how the entire rest of the movies are structured. What you see and hear happening in the opening scenes sets the tone for the length of the movie. Platoon begins immediately in Vietnam with grey images of soldiers, smoke, and body bags, giving a grave, hopeless tone from the start. Jacket begins with soldiers having their heads shaved as a country song plays in the background. The song is ironic because though the lines discuss serious topics such as “I don’t suppose that war will ever end, there’s fighting that will break us up again,” the tone doesn’t come across as serious, but rather lazy and insignificant. A single soldier presents Platoon, where we get to see the war through his eyes and hear his inner thoughts. We are able to create a more personal connection with him, causing us to sympathize for him, while it all around helps us understand better what is happening to the soldiers. Jacket is presented through an observer, resulting in the audience feeling disconnected from what is going on, which parallels how most Americans felt during the Vietnam War.

Full Metal Jacket was structured to be more of an entertaining movie, with the humorous comments, the “bootcamp” with the insane drill instructor, and the soldiers enduring basic training. Platoon is devoted entirely to the war, showing a lot more violence and actual fighting, and really everything that the soldiers experienced. The different approaches of each movie show the two different sides in the Vietnam War. Part 1 of Jacket presented more of what ignorant Americans believed war was like, with the intense “boot camp” but failed to present how brutal and life changing actual war is, until Part 2. Platoon being more serious and completely involved in the war, presented the side of war that most Americans were ignorant of, never have being exposed to it.

Full Metal Jacket vs. Platoon

Both Platoon and Full Metal Jacket were focused on the Vietnam War, but their styles differ greatly and they approach the Vietnam War differently, yet they both reach the same conclusion: war is bad. That sounds so simple, almost as if it is common sense. But after watching a total of more than four hours of bloodshed between the two, there is nothing left to say other than yes, war is bad.

Unlike Full Metal Jacket, Platoon follows a particular protagonist (Chris) throughout the entirety of the plot. He is the narrator, the audience’s central focus, the emotional attachment for the viewer. This emotional attachment first comes up when he writes home to his grandma, stating that he thinks he may have made a big mistake by coming to war. Because of Full Metal Jacket’s lack of an attachment to one character, it is more difficult for the audience to feel a personal connection to any of the many characters. Thus, rather than the movie following one man’s journey (like Platoon), it is more like a bird’s eye view of the war, with broader focuses on the entire events that took place, from the training camps to the deaths and how every man deals with the dehumanization of war.

The most striking thematic similarity in both Full Metal Jacket and Platoon is that the soldiers eventually turn against each other. In Full Metal Jacket, this occurs earlier on, when Private Pyle shoots his officer and then turns around and shoots himself while they are both still in the training camps. In Platoon, there are numerous different incidences of men turning on each other and killing Americans. It is partly because of this that we find ourselves watching the end of the movie and realizing that one by one, all but a handful of the main characters have been killed off, and for no particular reason at all. Which brings me to my next point: as you sit here watching both movies, you witness murder after murder and you get sucked into it, mesmerized yet disgusted by what is on the screen. However, if you truly step back and examine it, what are we even watching? Why are they doing this? This is the main similarity in both movies: neither ever presents the reason for why they’re fighting a war. Instead, the men are merely doing what they were told.

Full Metal Jacket

Platoon's scene in the village, where innocent Vietnamese people are killed, clearly provokes sympathy from the audience. On the other hand, Full Metal Jacket had a short scene that almost made me feel guilty for sympathizing with the Vietnamese people, despite what side they were on. Towards the end of the the movie in FMJ, the soldiers believe they are being ambushed until they realize only a single sniper is shooting after them. This sniper ultimately kills three of their men, leaving the surviving soldiers furious and ready for revenge. I also felt the same way, which must have been Kubrick's intentions. When the men finally discover where the sniper is hiding, they shoot her right before she is able to kill Joker. At this point I was actually excited they found her, and it wasn't until she lay there suffering that I felt any remorse for her. As she lay on the ground, the men stood in silence for a moment, contemplating what needed to be done. She began to pray, and a close up focused on each man's face, showing their confusion. She then pleaded to be shot in order to end her suffering, repeating her herself over and over again. This effect built up the tension and anticipation, which was obvious in each man's expression. Because this woman just murdered three of their very close comrades, none of the soldiers wanted to be the one to step up and end her suffering. Joker refused to let her lay there and rot, eventually shooting her. He somehow found it in himself to feel sympathy for this woman who, just five minutes ago, was only a bullet away from killing him. Kubrick's use of a woman for the sniper is unexpected, probably in an attempt to make her look more helpless than a man would as she begged for her life to end. Maybe his point was to show that the sniper woman was another human being with family, friends, and a sense of national pride just like the American solders, and she wasn't just a killing machine, but in fact was probably just as unhappy about the war as they were.

Patton

The subtle pauses between words. The artful emphasis on a single syllable. The raw emotion choked through the throat of the speaker in tears. These are all important components that cannot be written, but can only be seen and heard by a speaker seasoned in the use of rhetoric. George S. Patton’s speech to the Third Army Troops is a work where this statement is validated when compared side by side. When reading the transcript of the speech, the basic elements of rhetoric can easily be spotted. Logos is mentioned when he notes that “only two percent” of the soldiers are going to die, and ethos in the fact that Patton is a General in the United States Army. The finer points of Patton’s rhetoric, however, only became evident to me when viewing the speech delivered in Patton.
The most prominent form of rhetoric I noticed in the scene in Patton was empathy. For Patton to display empathy to these soldiers is a massive accomplishment on his part, since he is the one sending them off to war. Despite this fact, Patton can still effectively empathize with his audience by first addressing their fear of death and encouraging them that “every man is frightened at first in battle”. This empathy is taken a step further in the scene when the director closes in on Patton’s face when he talks about how envious he is of the soldiers about to go into battle. The emotion displayed on Patton’s face during the close-up is one of true sadness and remorse as he mentions how he must stay back and not partake in the glory of the war. Through the medium of film other visual cues are able to be emphasized on Patton’s uniform as well. The shots of Patton’s tightly clenched cane, his numerous medals and ribbons, and giant US flag in the background all create an atmosphere of military pride and patriotism. Visual forms of rhetoric added much more rhetorically to Patton’s speech. Even though the text can be read in various ways, with the use of empathy and effective film techniques, Patton’ meaning really shines through.

A key Element to Patton's Speech

While reading the speech, I kept thinking back to when we read the poem, "Naming of Parts" in class. We read the poem to ourselves and then out loud; I had my own idea about what the poem was about but wasn't really confident that I was correct. After kryzs read it in a different tone, and played the part of the "drill sargent" I guess, you get a totally different perception. As I read Patton's speech, I got that he was trying to motivate the soldiers and tell them how he felt, but you can only goes as far as your imagination can take you. As a reader you try to visualize the words you read, and create a setting in which the story is trying to protray, but after listening to the speech out loud, and actually seeing a real person vocalize the speech it was far more easier to understand the tone and vibe in which Patton was trying to express. You hear and see it, therefore you become more connected with the words, I read the speech on paper to myself, then out loud but still felt the same way each time, how I interpret the speech played heavily on its presentation.

Patton

Patton's speech on paper is a rally cry. It's purpose is to ready soldiers for battle and reassure them of any doubts they may have. In his first paragraph, Patton identifies with his soldiers by defining what it is to be American soldiers. He does this by describing how Americans are winners and that their interests are one in the same. After he establishes a sense of purpose, he breaks the ice to them that some of them may die. Dying is probably what is in the minds of the soldiers Patton is addressing. So far Patton to say it straightforward to them sort of lessens the anxiety the soldiers may be having. It's a war. People are going to die. He appeals to them deeper by testing their masculinity and tells them what it really means to be a man. On and on Patton delivers his speech which overall calms the fears of the soldiers but at the same time inspire them for the imminent battle.

It was much more inspiring actually hearing Patton's speech delivered than read. I can say that if I were one of those soldiers listening to the general, I would be pretty pumped up. It's like what happen in class today when a reader was asked to read the speech but he read it in a normal tone. When Harrison read it with emotion, it sounded much better. By hearing it, the rhetoric is so much more effective. That's the difference.

Full Metal Jacket/Platoon

For me, Full Metal Jacket was a more engaging, more involving account of Vietnam(compared to Platoon). We got a deeper look into the soldiers' reality and a sense of their experience. It felt less "Hollywood" and more raw and real. The characters were more relatable, and I actually felt emotion when they died; I had a sense of compassion for them. Contrastingly, I felt the characters in Platoon(well, most) were made out to be strictly villains. Stone really captured a feeling of barbarianism, and made Americans out to be ruthless murderers-which we were.

One thing I found interesting in Full Metal Jacket was Kubrick's choice of music. He juxtaposed scenes of death and destruction with upbeat songs. I'm not quite sure what he was doing rhetorically with this? Maybe this stark contrast makes their reality seem that much more horrific? Or maybe he's allowing the viewer to escape the harsh things going on on-screen, just as the soldiers try and escape their reality. But the songs do lighten the mood and change the tone completely-at least for a moment.

Platoon and Full Metal Jacket

Two different, yet similar approaches are used in these two movies. While Platoon has a more serious tone, with the main character reading a letter to his grandmother throughout the movie, Full Metal Jacket offers a bit of comic relief. Watching Platoon, the realities of the Vietnam War and what it did to the American soldiers really sets-in. In Platoon the contrast between the “veteran” American soldiers who had absolutely no sympathy for the enemy, even the innocent, and the “fresh” American soldiers who were afraid to even kill the enemy soldier, demonstrates how war transforms and hardens a person. Jacket shows less of the actual war, and more of the training and relationships between soldiers, giving a slightly lighter feel to the movie than Platoon. But even in Jacket, the incident of the soldier who begins as the “screw-up” but ends up obsessed with becoming the perfect soldier and he drives himself to suicide, shows just what soldiers have to go through even from the beginning with training. Also in Jacket, towards the end of the movie, the soldiers end up shooting a woman with a sniper. Though she was shooting at them, she appears innocent, but that no longer prevents the soldiers from sparing her, when it might have in the beginning of the movie. In Platoon a line that really struck me was when it talked about how the soldiers fighting in the war were the “unwanted” ones back home, yet they are the ones fighting for their country. I have read plenty of articles and textbooks talking about war, but watching these two movies honestly gave me a whole new respect for the people that fight for our country.

reading vs. hearing and watching

Hearing a speech is very different from reading one, but how do they affect someone's perspective towards a specific subject? As I was reading the Patton's speech that he gave to his troops, it felt like I was not quite comprehending the message. I can pin-point the skills he applied to his speech like the repetition, the obscene language, specifying to one particular audience, and the form of unity such as Americans and the word "We". This helped me understand the rhetoric part to an extent but it did not help me fully comprehend how it would have affected the troops. Patton's words on paper seemed motivational, but I didn't get the feeling as if I was actually there as one of his soldiers. He does use rhetoric in the straight foward sense, making his message clear as to what he was trying to persuade his troops to do. Words can be very effective. They carry a value of either lesser or greater importance that are taken into account when listening to a speech.
On the other hand, when I was watching the speech that Patton gave in the film, by just hearing his raspy yet strong tone of voice, it made me want to go out and fight in the war. The close up on his face was eye catching, his emotion could easily be read and his passion to win the war was written all over his face! Just hearing the speech out loud, with the exact tone that a general would use is persuasive enough to get the troops pumped up. The length of his speech was shorter which in this case worked for the film and the actor himself. He properly gave his speech with few words but with a lot of motivation and inspiration to get an army going. In conclusion, comparing the film versus the written speech really made a big difference as to what Patton was trying to get out to not only the troops, but America itself!

Full Metal Jacket

The movie Full Metal Jacket puts forth a great argument for the soldier's point of view on the Vietnam War. Almost every seen in the movie shows a negative viewpoint on the war by showing the marine's general outlook on their purpose and by using joker as the embodiment of the nation itself. The nation at the time was split on the war because it was seen to have no valid reason for being there in the first place. When the marines were interviewed in the city, many didn't know what the point was in fighting for people that just didn't care. One even stated that they were "shooting the wrong gooks." Joker, I thought, was a perfect example of the general mindset of every American at the time. He shows that he has strong beliefs for things, such as religion when he confronts the drill sergeant. However, he goes against being a good friend when under pressure and beats private Pile at night with the rest of the platoon. This is very similar to how many Americans believed in the "idea" in helping the Vietnamese people, but very few actually could when presented with the opportunity.

Platoon & Full Metal Jacket

It was interesting to see how differently the same subject, Vietnam, could be portrayed in such different ways. Both movies had a serious subject but Full Metal Jacket approached it with a more humorous tone. First looking at similarities, both allowed for the audience to take a glance into the life of American soldiers during the Vietnam War and to sympathize with them as they faced their countless hardships. We watched as the central characters in each movie progressed throughout the war; this allowed for us to better relate to them. As we saw them fight through struggles and develop friendships, it felt as if we were making relationships with the characters as well. This being said, we were able to feel more intense emotions as we saw fellow comrades fall during battle. There was no laughing for me as I was drawn into the plot of Platoon, which made Full Metal Jacket quite a surprise to me. I had never seen even a single scene of either of these movies, so after watching Platoon I expected to see something similar in Jacket. Needless to say, I did not get what I bargained for! Throughout the movie, jokes were made and situations put into play that lightened the mood, yet still managed to get the point across. Both movies stressed the many difficulties the soldiers faced but the main difference I saw in the two was exemplified through Jacket; its milder tone gave us a look into the lighter side of the war. The writers/directors both had similar goals yet used different tactics- tone was key in these two movies.

Regret

The reason the war started wasn't worth it after what had happened. William Defoe referenced this feeling when he commented that he believed what he was fighting for in '65 but not in '68 in Platoon. Joker probably regretted killing that girl at the end even though she killed his friends. She was fighting just as he was, for her country. But what were the American's fighting for, the prevention of the spread of Communism into a country full of rice patty farmers? After years of killing civilians Defoe couldn't convince himself, that he or his country were doing the right thing anymore. A soilder has to believe in what he is fighting for and if he doesn't why fight, right? Patton had good reason to instill courage into his men in his speech. They were fighting to prevent genocide that the Nazis were committing on innocent groups of people; they weren't killing innocent people and women and children like many American soldiers did in Vietnam.

Duality of Man

The message behind both of these 1980s Vietnam War films is to show the “duality of man” as Joker in Full Metal Jacket phrases it while describing the irony of his peace sign pin and his helmet which reads “Born to Kill”. Both Platoon and Full Metal Jacket show the Americans who fought in the Vietnam War as torn between the ideal cause of peace and freedom and merely just shooting anyone with no purpose but to stay alive. This division is displayed by the “civil war” between Elias and Barns in Platoon and between Cowboy and Animal Mother in Full Metal Jacket. Barns actually shoots Elias himself and Animal Mother’s stupid decision against Cowboy’s orders is what ends up killing Cowboy. Perhaps the agenda of both Stone and Kubrick in these movies was to show that in Vietnam, evil conquered good. Perhaps this is an answer to why America lost the war. When faced with stressful times the Americans evil sides came out. They often took out their anger on innocent villagers or made stupid decisions.

It was obvious in both movies that the Americans did not care at all about the South Vietnamese civilians. In Platoon they set a village on fire and murder innocents. In Full Metal Jacket they used the women as prostitutes and several marines during the interviews said that they thought that the South Vietnamese didn’t want the Americans helping them and that they were ungrateful. One even said, “We’re shooting the wrong gooks”. This leaves the viewer to question: if the Americans were not fighting for the well being of the Vietnamese, then what were they fighting for? The soldiers themselves seemed to question the very same thing. At the very end of Platoon Pvt. Taylor seems to come up with an answer. He says that now the survivors have an “obligation to build again, teach to others what [they] know[… ]to find a goodness and meaning to this life”. In Full Metal Jacket, Joker also comes an answer, one that is not so poetic “yes I am in a world of shit, but I am alive and I am not afraid”. Both protagonists have changed over the course of their time in Vietnam and both now view the world in a different way. At the end of the movie neither is the naïve boy who the viewer meets at the beginning. Pvt. Taylor had changed from the spoiled college kid who felt he had done nothing important in his life, to the pot-smoking, bandana-wearing killer. Joker had changed from the guy who took nothing seriously to the man who killed a girl to put her out of her misery. Both protagonists know that even though it is necessary to be killers sometimes, it is also necessary for them not to give up, not to resort to the inhumanity that they witnessed in the war, to teach others what they have learned, and to strive for peace.

"Marine, what is that button on your body armor? "

Upon finishing Full Metal Jacket, I was drawn to Joker’s perspective about humanity. After being addressed about his ironic placement of a peace pin on his lapel and the phrase “Born to Kill” on his helmet, Joker gave the Colonel an insightful answer as to why he displayed both. He stated that he was “trying to suggest something about the duality of man.” Although the movie only addresses this theme explicitly during this very short scene, it is implicitly seen throughout the movie. What Joker was trying to convey through his display was that man has the inclination to go to war even though he has an even greater potential for peace. While war is being fought on one side of the world displaying humanity’s self-destruction, the complete opposite can be seen in the desire for peace in another region of the world.

This is echoed through Charlie Sheen’s character in Platoon. After blindly following Sergeant Barnes for a majority of the movie, Chris comes to a realization when he stopped his fellow soldiers from raping an innocent woman. He discovered that although he was being constantly put in the situation to take lives, he should take every moment he can to save lives. It is at this point that he feels independent of his fellow soldiers and looks to Sgt. Elias as a model for moral character. Sheen’s character said in the final scene of the movie that he was born of two fathers: the moral Elias and the sadistic Barnes. He makes the connection that even though war maybe necessary, one should never lose sight of his humanity. The sense of an elusive but attainable peace is best summarized by the musical selection for the movie. The choice to sequence the movie with Adagio for Strings highlights this “duality of man.”

Patton

When I was reading Patton's speech to his men, I thought of it as a "pep talk" like a football coach would give to his team. He was using words like "bullshit" to excite the guys, rile them up for battle. I imagined at the pauses in his speech men yelling, "HOO_RAH!" But, whenever I watched the clip of the reinactment of Patton's speech, I discovered a different tone. The video was much more somber, and much more serious. The American flag cascading behind the general even made for a somber and serious tone. General Patton's image piercing through the flag's distinct stars and stripes was an intimidating sight. His goal to motivate, encourage, and reassure his men of their American identity was well acheived in this speech through the video. I don't believe that simply reading this speech is enough to experience the rhetoric that General Patton acheived.
Heinrichs argues in many ways that in order to make a good argument, the speaker needs to establish ethos. I think that Patton's ethos preceded him in this speech, but that didn't stop him from using this tactic of rhetoric. Three tools that Heinrichs mentions in Thank You for Arguing include: "1) Show off your experience 2) Bend the rules, and 3) Appear to take the middle course"(Heinrichs, 71). General Patton quickly checked off the first on this list by his preceding reputation as a well known war general in the American army. He bent the rules by talking to his men in a way that wouldn't be typical to an army general. For example, "If not, sometime a German son-of-a-bitch will sneak up behind him and beat him to death with a sock full of shit" (Patton, 450). And thirdly, the general took the middle road by telling his men that great soldiors weren't necessarily fearless. These soldiors would have their own moments of cowardice that may last hours or months, but real American soldiors don't give up fighting. He made it okay for these men to be human. It was not okay to be a coward or the enemy, but the middle road- a human, better yet, an American.

Platoon

When I first watched Platoon, I watched it purely for entertainment. I watched it analyzing exactly how I do for any movie that I would watch when I am bored, and I was thoroughly entertained. I watched it for the action in the battlefield, the hazing of a rookie, a sense of justice and belief in the equality of men such that all people of economic status must serve, and the betrayal of a unit. I watched it and, at the end of the movie, realized my emotions and how they were swayed by such rhetoric in the film.

From an empathetic view, I watched as I was sucked in to the fear of constant hunting and preying. I saw men and how they coped with boredom, stress, and fear and questioned myself as to whether I would be different - whether I would be like Elias and Taylor believing in a sense of justice or fall victim to self-pleasure and adrenaline-filled emotions. I was sucked into the film to such an extent, until the attempted rape.

At such realities, I stepped back, forcefully or not, and again viewed in judgment as to the actions of men and the cruelties they could play. I was stepped back into reality, and away from a world where the constant threat of gunfire and the reek of death no longer played any controlling motion. I watched a woman get killed simply for speaking out, and I saw a mentally handicapped child get beaten to death. I was as part spectator as I was soldier during the entire film.

At the end of the film, I realized I had watched and experienced a war that knew no purpose- a war which drove people insane and bored into a negative light. I realized I had watched a film and seen cruelties but never really knew how true these events could be. I watched people die in cold blood or even hide under a dead body in fear or mutilate oneself to avoid more battles. I never knew how much of it was true, but my emotions were sucked in and, for the life of me, could not stop watching this film. In the end, I was never really in battle and I will never be weighed down with the feelings of anger, revenge, remorse, or regret as these soldiers were, but the film brought into light exactly what I feel the writer wanted: war is hell.

Patton Aloud .vs. Patton Read

Readings are often misinterpreted because of the tone that the reader uses in presenting the words written down on the piece of paper. The power of words said aloud presented to an audience are far more powerful than off of a page. Those who use the right tone and gestures are far more inclined to gain what they are striving towards, which are the basis of an average argument. For example, a politicians speech written down on paper may seem very monotone, but the audience listening to the speech is far more inclined to receive the message he is sending across and feel the magnitude of his or her words. Patton's speech, which was originally read by yours, truly was read in a boring tone, which did not show the power of those words said during his famous World War II speech. When read aloud with a sense of camaraderie and machoness the reader is then able to visualize what it felt like sitting in the audience during the famous general/orators speech.

The question is: was there a right or wrong way to present these words? Yes, rhetoric is most effective when it is able to appeal to ones emotions and affect their perspective in a clear manner. Once the movie was played I was able to experience these words in a far greater way than the reading, as Patton was able to instill a fire of patriotism, courage, and duty into the soldiers sitting in front of him. Patton used rhetoric in the right way with his use of pathos to rouse his audience to action.

All great orators are able to stir up ones emotions by their tone, gesture, and ability to touch ones feelings inside. It is said that Saint Augustine, one of the fathers of the Christian Church have famous sermons and was not content with solely seizing the audiences attention, but making them cry. He, along with many others, such as Aristotle, Mariah Carey, President Obama, and General Patton are prime examples of the impact ones exemplified rhetoric can have upon

Reading Patton vs. Hearing Patton

Reading Patton's speech on paper doesn't even compare to the effects of hearing it out loud. The tone in his speech is such an important factor, and it can easily be misrepresented without it. While reading the speech for the first time on paper, I was actually a little confused about why the profanity was necessary and why Patton put such an emphasis on American traditions. After hearing the speech, it was easier to understand that Patton's blunt language is an attempt to motivate his audience and distract them from their fears. If the soldiers simply read the speech before going off to battle, I doubt it would have much of an effect on them nor would it be remembered. But after listening to such a bold speech, the soldiers will most likely be able to feel the same pride in America they felt during the speech. Many people would be offended by Patton's words on a piece of paper, but when it's heard out lout, the purpose becomes a little more clear: to show the soldiers they can still fight despite their fear.

The Written Word vs. The Spoken Word

Words on a page are often taken for granted, and rather than being appreciated as an art of the mind, they are easily mistaken for random figures scribbled out in ink. However, the spoken word has a far greater power: it is what was used to declare wars, to spread religions, to win elections, to profess love, to debate, to teach, to communicate despite illiteracy. For example, when sitting in bed reading the Bible, it often comes across as boring and old-fashioned. However, when sitting in church, a preacher can fill those words with passion and actually move his or her audience to cry, to rejoice, to close their eyes and not only hear but actually listen to the word of God. Much in the same way, merely reading the words on the page from General Patton’s speech will have close to no effect on the reader. When read with passion, they might bring out a chuckle or too. When performed, however…when really spoken with a purpose and a target audience and a fiery look in one’s eye, only then will the response succeed in what the speech was written to do.

It’s baffling to consider how many different ways words can be interpreted. When reading Patton’s speech, I was imagining the movie scene vividly in my mind: he would laugh a time or two and really play into the physical role of moving with the words. The young men in the audience would even laugh back a time or two, getting all riled up and hitting each other on the arm every now and then. I had nailed it; this was the way that the speech was supposed to be delivered, I was sure. However, Patton’s director Franklin Schaffner had apparently imagined the speech quite differently than I had; when we finally watched the scene, his version was much more stern, with General Patton speaking almost meanly with no response from the men in the audience. This made me think back to the phrase I purposefully used in the previous sentence: “supposed to.” Is there even such a thing in rhetoric? Obviously, in this case, we could get eyewitnesses who were in the audience of that speech to confirm how Patton had truly delivered it. But, in regards to the speech as a piece of rhetoric, is there really any right way to deliver it? There is a wrong way, which is to read it as if it is just words randomly put together on a page. However, there are multiple right ways, just as my version and Schaffner’s version were both effective. This leads us to the ultimate conclusion in regards to spoken rhetoric: as long as it is spoken with a purpose and a clear goal, every way is the right way. Just like the preacher, you have to find the passion if you expect a reaction from the audience.

Turning Point

When reading a story about someone's life and their journey to discover him/herself (which seems to be a common theme in a lot of fiction novels), I try to think about at what point the character turns around, reaches a climax, or changes perspectives. In The Crying of Lot 49, I felt that there was no specific point of climax for her character. The insane situation with her psychiatrist could be argued as the climax, the conversation in the bar with the man that called Oedipa "Arnold" at the end could also be argued as the climax. But, does the climax even exist in this novel? Or is the climax purposefully left out and shadowed at the end of the story during the auction? It's almost like Pynchon is setting us up for a Crying of Lot 49 Episode II.

Lot 49

Well to start off the time period the book was written was around the same time of the vietnam war. As to the rhetoric aspect of the course the tet was hard to understand, even for me pick out any forms of rhetoric. I believe the characters had more of impact than the overall story. The paranoids, who were introduced in the story when Oedipa went to San Narciso, reminded me of Woodstock Festival back in 1969 when all the hippies gathered together to show that peace still existed and problems could be resolved. Other than there drug usage which in this era, was getting higher and higher, it played a key role of how the chareacters reacted towards it, for example Metzger. Pynchon writing style throughout the whole book was totally confusing, cause he kept shifting from Oedipa's past, her present, and I believe her hallucinations. This falls back to "Rhetoric-What it i, Why needed?" when a writer must be "reasonably clear and straight foward with his witing, but Pynchon definetly does not follow this priniciple because he loops around the same subject for a while until he makes his point. As to history I was only able to relate it to woodstock festival cause that was what stood out for me whe Oedipa met hippie band. When Oedipa's psychologist went haywired I really did not understand how that fed the climax, cause in all do respect Oedipa never needed him, he was in need the whole time. The over all ending was just a big circle for me, because she never really discovered anything, only to find out that she was taken for a ride with no meaning. Oedipa was lonely to begin with, and byt the end she really did not change what so ever.
I did not find myself any where similar to Oedipa or to her situation just cause it was just her trying to find out about herself but in the end she just finds out who she was at the begining. As a reader I can understand as to why she would live life of loneliness yet alone have an affair on her husband. She is lonenly, a desperate housewife who was seeking meaning her life. My strategy that I tried was just imagining myself in her shoes, in a relationship that has no fire, in a world that was filled of corruption and chaos, and just trying to figure out if I would had followed the same path she had.

Pynchon

Looking at the Bordando el Manto Terrestre painting, I now see why Oedipa cried. In my opinion, she saw herself trapped in her own little insignificant world. She lives a very sad life before she received that will from Pierce. Throwing tupperware parties and getting drunk all the time in her uptown home in the comfortable California weather. The painting reflected everything and revealed to her how unfulfilling her life is. Also, I think it also reveals to her a solution. The women seem to be weaving some sort of long fabric that stretches out into the towns from the tower. Maybe she has to take action and plan her own escape. Just my two cents.

In comparison between Pynchon's essay "Journey into the Mind of Watts" and Lot 49, I found Pynchon's writing style to be in both texts. They were still a little confusing to read, but I think his essay was a little easier to read because it was more realistic. The whole racist cop situation was interesting because I could put myself in the shoes of African Americans. Pynchon really describes the worlds in the two texts well. The life of Oedipa as one of lavish parties and fine living compared to African Americans in Watt. It's as if he lives in both worlds and can write all about them.

Comparison of Pynchon's Fiction and Non-fiction

While reading Pynchon's article, Journey into the Mind of Watts, I found that it was much easier to comprehend than The Crying of Lot 49. His fiction was very well worded and not just trains of thoughts thrown together. I also realized the point he was trying to get accross to his audience a lot quicker. The point being that the majority of people from Watts are stereotyped as criminals, failures, or just plain stupid, but they are never given a chance to prove themselves otherwise. Pynchon's compassion for these people in Watts is very obvious in his article, but in his non-fiction it took a lot of thinking to establish what he is really trying to say about Oedipa.

Watts and Lot

Pynchon references filling a void in the "Bordando el Manto Terrestre" with tapestry made from the girls with heart-shaped faces in Lot 49, and I think he references filling the void, that is the misconnection between whites and blacks in Watts, in the Watts article; blacks only being oppressed because of thousands of years of racism towards them. The girls in the painting are trying to make up the world that surrounds them and because of their facial expressions it seems they are tried by it. The young black children in Watts are trying to overlook all the abuse they recieve and their families have recieved from the Man by going to get jobs but the little man and his little ploys have kept them in the back of every ones minds and cuts into them like glass. They get ignored so often that they have become numb to itfroming being shut down, a false "now" like all the others; thusly they can't even feel the glass in their feet anymore.

Comparing the Writings of Thomas Pynchon

While reading Pynchon's non-fiction piece, "Journey Into the Mind of Watts", a sense of sympathy and compassion is evoked within the reader; these were the emotions I felt towards this work. Right away I could tell he was employing pathos, while depicting scenes that cut straight to the reader's heart. In comparison, looking at "Crying of Lot 49", it is obvious that the two have some major differences. In this novel, Pynchon uses satire and logos to appeal to his readers. The entire book is meant to be mysterious and make its audience think deep into the many possibilities of its overall point. Long sentences with many commas are used in order to convey the overworked mind of the main character, Oedipa, as something so simple as a painting is compared to the way she feels about her own life. From this, it can be seen that Pynchon uses the art of rhetoric and argument in both of his pieces of writing, but in largely contrasting ways. Throughout "Crying" it seemed as if I was fighting a constant battle of understanding, one that I could not win. Scenes were continually changing and new characters being introduced with every turn of the page. It is not until the very end of the novel where we even find of the reason for the title of the book. In "Journey", Pynchon cuts straight to the point and it is obvious from the beginning the reason for this writing and the point he is trying to convey. For me, this clarity, along with the use of pathos was quite more convincing to me as a reader than the confusion and cunningly weaved details that "Crying" portrayed.