Full Metal Jacket

A detailed Summary of Full Metal Jacket

In 1968, South Vietnam came under a large-scale sweeping attack from North Vietnamese and Vietcong forces. Many cities and rural areas were attacked simultaneously. Within days though, American forces were able to turn back the onslaught and recapture most areas. This massive attack became know as the Tet Offensive. From strictly a military point of view, the Tet Offensive was a huge defeat for the North, but the Tet Offensive was a huge psychological victory. It serve to show America that the light at the end of this tunnel was much farther away than they had realized.

Stanley Kubrick, in the second half of his movie, Full Metal Jacket, used the Tet Offensive to strip away all of the romantics of war. Also, he accomplishes the same effect in the first half, which took place at the Marine Boot Camp in Parris Island. Full Metal Jacket shows war to be harsh and cold as the devil himself, and boot camp to be grueling enough to literally drive a man mad. This is quite unlike the war movies that were made in yester decade that glamorized war and filled it with stars as big as John "The Duke" Wayne. Stanley Kubrick did a surpassing job in shattering the romantic image of the hell known as war.

s at the Marine Boot Camp in Parris Island. Krubrick shows how the hell and torment of war extends past the battlefield and has permeated through the rigorous, unrelenting training of warfare. While there 'Joker', the main character, makes friends with 'Gomer Pyle', a fat and clumsy recruit who seems to be anything but Marine. Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, the drill instructor, constantly and without mercy points out everything that is done wrong by his recruits, especially 'Gomer Pyle'. It gets to the point where Hartman makes everyone else pay for 'Pyle's mistakes. This obviously makes 'Pyle' quite unpopular. In the middle of the night, all of the other recruits held 'Pyle' down, gagged him, and took turns beating him. This was the one event that shattered 'Pyle's soul. After that, 'Pyle' improved his skill in all areas and no longer made mistakes, but the crazed look in his eye and the fact that he spoke to his rifle suggest that something was not right in 'Pyle's head. The pressure, pain, and embarrassment had taken a toll on 'Gomer Pyle' and turned him into a certifiable Section 8. On the last night of boot camp, 'Joker' is assigned to fire watch. He finds 'Pyle' in the bathroom with a gun. Soon Hartman enters the room and commands that 'Pyle' disarm himself. 'Pyle' shoots and kills the sergeant, then turns the gun on himself. The irony of this scene is that 'Pyle' did what he was trained to do. The whole point of boot camp was to turn these men into killers, and 'Pyle' became just that. Hartman earlier in the movie had even gone as far as to emphasize that Lee Harvey Oswald, John F. Kennedy's assassin, and Charles Whitman, the Texas Tower Sniper, had learned how t

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Approximate Word count = 1140
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Movies