Apocalypse Now

I honestly don’t think that most of the men in Vietnam can even be considered men. Maybe it is because of all the stress of war or maybe it is simply because they are boys who haven’t had the chance to grown up yet. The movie Apocalypse Now shows the chaos that was Vietnam along with its effect on the boys who fought in it. Obviously the soldiers are under a lot of pressure, they must protect each other and complete the mission without dying in the process. With that amount of stress it is no wonder that some people snap. A good example of this is when Chef and the Captain go into the jungle in search of mangos and get scared by a tiger. Even though the Captain shot the tiger quickly after it appeared, Chef was still crying and laughing hysterically. The tension of the moment was too much for Chef so when the tiger jumped out of the bushes he lost all composure. Another good example of this in Apocalypse Now is when the team is doing a checking the small Vietnamese boat in the river and Clean starts shooting everyone on the boat because he gets startled. These young men commit violent acts out of fear, which turns into guilt and can only be relived by more and more violence. However this violence is often portrayed as playfulness due to the age of the soldiers. We have seen it The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, he says in his story Spin that his platoon had an average age of 18 or 19 and because of it they tended to get take games to the extreme and not understand when they’ve crossed a line. I think it sounds like we have given gun to children and expect them to act like adults.