Full Metal Jacket Film Analysis

A soldier is mainly kept to be able to protect his or her nation from its enemies and be able to ensure that peace prevails. For a given individual to be granted the name soldier, he or she has to undergo various training test and taught several skills taught at the various training camps. However, an unknown factor is what these soldiers have to be able to endure at the various stages in their training history and also after the wars the soldier is exposed to. Death, stress, and mental breakdown are some of the various factors the soldiers undergo during periods of war and after the war all in the gain of making their country proud (Kubrick, 2007). This leaves most children orphans or parents childless when their own dies on the line of being a soldier. We shall examine these factors under two movies the full metal jacket and the paths of glory.
The paths of glory is an action film that is mainly based on a true story of four French soldiers who faced execution because of refusing to obey a direct order of the command of committing a suicidal attack (Kubrick, 2007). The full metal jacket, on the other hand, is about a platoon of soldiers. The film exposes the journey of the various soldiers through their training period till the group is later posted to Vietnam where we see the aftermath during the war. …show more content…
One major factor that has been exposed in both films is the physiological impact war and the acts of training exposed to soldiers. Under the full metal jacket a recruit named Pyle is subjected to severe training by his commander Hartman. Later Pyle is not able to keep up with this training and eventually kills Hartman and shoots himself. In the paths of glory, four soldiers are sent to destroy a German camp at a position known as the anthill. Recognizing the imminent death, the soldiers refuse and are executed to set an example for the other soldiers. These incidences clearly show the psychological stress soldiers have to undergo. Suicidal is always considered a mental breakdown that at last mainly exposes a soldier as a threat to himself, his friends and family. At various instances soldiers suffering from mental breakdown turn to their fellow soldiers and harm them without their knowledge. After the war, various families have been able to report cases of after war soldiers experiencing mental breakdown and eventually harming one of their own. This factor has led to most families breaking up and having to endure huge cost to pay up for the various medical bills in order to take care of