To Fight Or Not To Fight
by alison drew ~ September 16th, 2010. Filed under: Uncategorized.What I find the most interesting about the movie, is the fact that the entire time Swafford never got to fire his gun. That is what gradually drove him crazy while in the Middle East; that he trained and put himself through the most intense physical and mental training in order to fight for war, and never actually got to fight. So I bring up this question: Is it worse to fight and die in war, or is it worse to prepare and train and brainwash yourself for a war but never get to fight? As Freud explained in his letter to Einstein, violence is a part of human nature; kill or be killed. Do you think if Swafford actually got that chance to fire his gun, would he have gone mad? Would his best friend have killed himself afterwords? I think that underlying factor that no one really got to fight in war is one of the major factors in bringing the marines together, but also part of what drove them apart. Also, the fact that because there was no fighting going on, the marines were subject to sit by while there personal lives back in the U.S. slowly fell apart. One man’s wife cheated on him with his neighbor, Swafford lost his girlfriend to another man, and the worst part was that after they got back there were no parades, no cheering, no nothing. So not only did the lack of an actual fight drive the marines mad by not fulfilling their needs to kill the enemy, but it caused support from home to fade as well. It almost makes you want to die for your country, because if you don’t and come back alive your old life is dead anyway.
September 17th, 2010 at 11:27 am
I like what you said that when you come back, your old life is dead. I totally agree with that. Once you go to war a part of you does die. The young men portrayed in the movie would never be the same. They were coerced by the military into having this desire to kill and nt being able to fulfill this desire drove them crazy. And its a double whammy for them because they already have to deal with the trauma that all soldiers go through of being killers but they just never got to finish the act and that brings a whole new element that probably leaves them in limbo. I think its interesting that the ones that wanted to kill the most from the beginning were the ones that went the furthest off the deep end. Swafford’s friend just wanted that one kill and he finally got it when he took his own life. And the other soldier that kept talking about killing some Iraqis stole and molested a corpse. The rest of them, although scarred i’m sure, were able to go on and lead normal lives. And the one who seemed to see all the politics in the war was an executive or something. So to answer you question, I think that how they reacted to that situation depended a lot on their mental state from the beginning. For some, it may have been better if they died out there. But most of them, their lives went back to as normal as they could be.
January 26th, 2013 at 5:56 am
Hi, i read your blog for a long time, but it’s my first comment. I’vo got the same feelings about this movie as you have.
I was watching it last time when I was pregnant, and now i read about it on your blog, so i’m going to watch it again and try to feel like a felt this time.
January 28th, 2013 at 9:41 pm
Thanks for the comment! So cool that people are still responding to my post from a while back and still finding relevance in it. Brings back so many great memories. Love this class!