The movie Apocalypse Now shares
similar themes to O’Brien’s stories. They both talk about the Vietnam War and
the soldiers’ experiences during the war. These soldiers don’t really
understand the war nor their mission. In O’Brien’s stories, the soldiers seem
to just go fight the war to stop the communists taking over Vietnam and
spreading to other regions like the domino effect. In Apocalypse Now, Willard has to go on a boat trip toward Cambodia to
kill the Green Beret Colonel Walter E. Kurtz because he has decided to take
matter into his own hand and kills the four Vietnamese. Captain Willard doesn’t
really understand why he has to kill one of their own men but he takes the job
any way. It’s funny how the army is more concern about killing Colonel Kurtz
than fighting the ongoing war. It seems like they don’t get their priority
straight.
O’Brien’s stories
and Apocalypse Now both show deaths
in many imaginable ways. Their comrades die off one after another. After one
soldier dies, the rest of them seem to get a little more insane. The soldiers’
sanity goes hand-in-hand with what they have seen. This finally reaches its
limit when Captain Willard uses machete to butcher Colonel Kurtz. Captain
Willard covered in blood looks like a beast. This image is similar to that of
Kiley torturing the Viet Cong baby buffalo after his best friend, Lemon, dies.
The movie Apocalypse Now and O’Brien’s stories
also show how the Westerners see the Vietnamese and the Cambodian. They see the
natives as savages who are not capable of understanding what’s going on around
them. The Cambodian natives are depicted
as sub-species of human who are not fully clothed and are scared of siren
noises. This image is more pronounce at the end of the movie where the
Cambodians do their water buffalo killing ritual. They butcher the animal while
it’s still alive.
You made same very unique points in this piece. I like how you pointed out that the westerners saw the Vietnamese and Cambodians as savages. It’s a complete misunderstanding, which helped to propitiate the war. America just did not understand the mindset of the Vietnamese people, which lead to some horrible atrocities. You also did a good job of showing the similarities between O’Brien and the movie. Death is the biggest part of war, which creates emotional scars if you aren’t killed.
ReplyDeleteI liked your comparison between what Cpt Willard did to Col Kurtz to what Rat Kiely did to the baby water buffalo. Both were pretty brutal executions but in the case of Cpt Willard it was a human being who he was picking apart with a machete not a buffalo which is a lot different to me. Both pretty messed up, but Cpt Willard was doing his job at the end of the day while Kiely was just blowing of steam.
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