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Saving Private Ryan Ethical Issues Essay

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This paper is being conducted on the ethical dilemma that occurred during the movie Saving private Ryan. A mother unknowingly has lost three sons to battles across Europe in a single day. The Chief of Staff of the US Army has made the decision that the last remaining son must be pulled from the battlefield at once as he is the last surviving male in his family. There are many ethical dilemmas throughout the entirety of the movie, but there was one that stuck out to me the most. As the movie is steadily going alone I constantly asked myself what was the purpose of the movie and why were the Soldiers there. In return I kept coming up with the same conclusion that a group of guys are basically out risking there lives for ONE person. At any point throughout the mission these guys could have just given up and turned around because who can one justify why other men should risk their lives to save just one other person. These other men had mothers as well, and many of them could have been the last son in the family also. How could the military expect a small team of eight to go across the battlefield with the hopes of finding a single person in which at that time no one knew where he …show more content…

Private Ryan resisted on going home until he found out that during the process of finding him, two of the soldiers from the team sent in to find him end up died due to enemy fire, with four more of the Soldiers dying within the final battle of the movie. Was there something or anything about Private Ryan’s rescue that we could use to justify that saving him at the expense of the team member was worth it. During the movie Captain Miller turns to one of the Sergeants and says that (Spielberg, 1999) “Ryan had better do something great, such as finding a cure for cancer to justify the loss of the men’s lives” from Captain Millers

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