Analysis Of The Movie Glory

The 1989 movie Glory is a Civil War film based on the history of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Regiment. The movie focuses on one of the first black regiments in the Civil War, which must overcome an enormous amount of adversity during the war. The film was told through the eyes of the white regiment leader, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw a Boston born abolitionist. The regiment was commissioned in March of 1863 after the passage of the Emancipation Proclamation. The film shows the problems that blacks faced even after Emancipation. They had to deal with discrimination and racism even among the whites in their own battalion. The discrimination these men faced ran the gambit from being denied shoes and rifles to being denied the same wages as white soldiers. The book speaks about the persistent black poverty during this time and this hits on why. Even the government didn’t believe that blacks were as good as whites and therefore didn’t deserve the same wages for the same work. Instead of soldiers the Army used these enlisted men as work horses until Colonel Shaw pushes for them to be able to go into battle. “We will offer pride and dignity to those who have suffered only degradation.”, this was said by Fredrick Douglass in the …show more content…
As expect they experience heavy losses and Colonel Shaw dies and the occupation of Fort Wagner fails. Even with all this the 54TH encouraged many more African Americans to enter the war and the mobilization of African American troops. Glory was a carefully constructed film that portrayed an accurate representation of the life of a Civil War solider. This film effectively captured the struggles and triumphs of the black Union soldier. The movie was based largely on fact, Zwick used Colonel Shaw’s letters to his family and the books “Lay this Laurel” and “One Gallant