Hurt Locker

At one point, he received a new soldier in his platoon that called himself "Prince". Prince and James had a rough start in their relationship. James was mad about the drugs that was Prince's rucksack and Prince was mad about James burning the marijuana. In the first patrol that Prince was in with the Platoon Leader, he fired his M79 at him (missing by purpose) in an act of disrespect. James at first didn't know what to do.

War. This word stirs up an abundance of different emotions. Feelings such as fear, pain and frustration are brought to the surface. But there is also contrasting views to this topic. When someone else hears the word “war,” they may feel power, opportunity or victory. In his novel The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien highlights the array of emotions that war encompasses. “War is hell, but that's not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery” (O’Brien 76). This quote perfectly illustrates how many different feelings one goes through when faced with this topic. It can be concluded

Saving Private Ryan is a movie that generates strong responses from most people that see it. While interviewing four individuals and reading three movie reviews, I found that each of my subjects would recommend it, not one of the individuals interviewed felt the violence was senseless, and all of them left the movie with a strong emotional response of some kind. It appears that Saving Private Ryan is the kind of movie to which many can relate.

War is an objective obstacle that at most times can be avoided. Conversely, when it rears its ugly head it becomes bothersome and ends up dividing countries and families. One of the most memorable wars will be the Vietnam War. In “The Things They Carried,” Tim O'Brien uses contrast and contradictions to reveal the character’s feeling and the effect of war to bring about the theme of peace and war.

“I did it alone, waiting in the dark doorway of a barbershop as the women got off the bus, ripping the purses out of their protesting hands as they cried out in fear and shock” (McBride 34). But according to James, he had every right in the world to steal from other people. At that time he was feeling that he “was getting back at the world for injustices I had suffered” (McBride 34). Several years later, James finally realized how wrong he was. He felt horrible about the everything he had done, and completely regretted all the decisions he made things he did as a teenager. James even claimed that “If you sat me down and asked me which injustices I was talking about, I wouldn't be able to name them if my life depended on it” (McBride 34). In the beginning and the end of the book, James perspective on the world is very similar. It took a lot of questioning the world, and him making numerous wrong decisions, but in the end, all he discovered is that he was right all along. James learned that it’s not alright to take out your frustrations on the world and on other people, it’s not fair to them or yourself because it’ll just make you feel worse in the

By exploring the theme of war, Blair is able to help the audience make connections to the film through the events and setting the characters experience.

Society’s perception on war is often clouded by popular media. Action packed movies with fictional war heroes, and video games set in past wars, are examples of such hyperbole. It is outlets like these that raise society’s expectations of soldiers into unrealistic ideas. While it may seem as black and white as killing the bad guy, majority of the population does not consider the long term effects war may have on soldiers. Most movies portray soldiers as emotionless killing machines and leave out the lifelong psychological effects war can have on a person. Tim O’Brien’s book The Things They Carried is a look into the mind of a soldier in the middle of war. In the book, we learn of First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, a soldier who is carrying the guilt

Nothing happening in the present worried James more than the sake of his mother’s life. Nonetheless, young James is still angry and confused as to what his heritage is. Even though his main concern is on his mother, he still questions his identity and worries for himself. He does not know his heritage and he has no clue where he belongs. How can he hate the whites if his mother is one and how can he hate the blacks if his father is one? He is absolutely torn and perplexed. His only solution to this seems to be spending a few years on the streets drinking alcohol,

In the novel, The Things They Carried, the war stories of the characters are nothing like the glamour-filled heroic tales. Men had enlisted in the Vietnam war in honor of serving their country despite the uncertain outcomes. The silent truths of the war remain hidden until resurfaced through trauma. The narrator, Tim O’Brien shows the readers how the results of war can be unsettling and scar the soldiers forever. Though the soldiers have survived physically, mentally they are dead. Every time a death takes place in the story, guilt takes over the soldiers rational thoughts. In The Things They Carried, O’Brien clarifies the misconceptions of war being honorable to portray the truth of the Vietnam War and how it has psychologically self-destructive

The novel is considered a war novel when it discusses the hard ships each character has and the experiences they have while they are in Vietnam. For example, when Norman Bowker returned home from the war he had nothing to do or nothing to think about other than the war. It impacted his life so much, he didn’t have anything outside the war. What makes the novel an anti-war novel is when death appears, like when Kiowa died. He passed in terrible conditions which gives some characters and readers a hate for the war.

An accurate portrayal is given from the point of view of someone that is trying to give a truthful and realistic account of a situation. The person must look past other outside influences and give their view and feelings on the subject in order to produce an accurate portrayal. The Things They Carried contained many accurate portrayals of the soldiers who were fighting in Vietnam. The novel opened up to those who have not experienced war and let the reader see the effects of war on soldiers and the soldier’s interpretation on what they went through. Although The Things They Carried is a fiction novel, it gives a truthful depiction of how battle, combat, and the entire presence of war affects a person and alters them in many ways. O’Brien reflected on when he “There was that coldness inside of me. I wasn’t myself. I felt hollow and dangerous,” he realized that war had changed him into being a more “cold” person (207). In this situation, he knew he was guilty and went from courageous to a coward in only a few chapters. We have one select person telling their experience that may not be considered historically accurate because of bias or exaggeration, although we are still their hearing their accurate portrayal of what happened and how it affected

Saving Private Ryan is a theatrical masterpiece that incorporates many universal themes that almost all people can relate to. The movie follows a squad of U.S. soldiers as they battle through the trenches of World War II. Directed by the great Stephen Spielberg, the movie is claimed by many to be the most accurate presentation of war in any movie to date. The movie includes several themes that helps captivate the audience and truly help people understand just how horrible war is. The idea of losing loved ones frightens even the toughest of us, and being lost in a foreign land scares many others. Both of these themes are thoroughly explored and propelled onto the audience to experience. The extremely accurate depiction of war, the universal themes that everyone can relate to, and the film being a theatrical masterpiece are all reasons why everyone should watch Saving Private Ryan.

This paper will be discussing the two movies The Green Berets (1968) and Apocalypse Now (1978), and argue how The Green Berets is a propagandist pro-war film depicting the unrealities of the Vietnam War while Apocalypse Now is an ambiguous anti-war film that shows the social and political absurdities of the Vietnam War.

The power and prestige of this film comes not from its controversial and serious subject matter, but from the unbiased way in which the story is

Cache, by Michael Haneke, is certainly a movie that is likely to leave its audience feeling unsettled. Themes of surveillance and the invasion of personal space, combined with filming techniques that consistently blur the line between reality and dream-like visual objectivity play heavily on the psyche, while the depictions of the characters’ traumatic experiences weigh on the emotions. Scenes that lull the viewer into uncomfortable passivity are abruptly interrupted by images of death, both real and symbolic, jolting moviegoers out of their collective trance and inducing a stress response that bears uncanny resemblance to the experience of awakening from a nightmare. There is no doubt that this film was intended to elicit some very specific physical and psychological reactions from its viewers, and it does so with staggering precision.