Moral Dilemmas In Saving Private Ryan

In the film Saving Private Ryan, the main characters are tasked with handling many situations to the best of their abilities. The film, littered with a wide range of emotions, contains a great deal of moral dilemmas. One scene in particular, entrenched in a moral dilemma, the main characters are faced with deciding what to do with a captured Nazi soldier, who killed one of their companions only seconds before his capture. After a group internal struggle, Captain Miller decides to release the prisoner and the group carries on with their mission. In this essay I plan to identify, define and explain the level of moral reasoning that, Captain Miller; Corporal Upham; and the Privates, go through in their efforts to decide what to do with their Prisoner of War (POW). The first person that I will evaluate is Captain Miller. I believe that Miller is thinking in the sixth stage, universal ethical principle orientation. While Miller does not implicitly state his care for human life over everything else, it is clear that when he dismisses himself from the group that he does. After weeping for his lost soldier, and all of the other death around him, Miller returns to the group to announce to his …show more content…
I believe that the privates were operating on the Pre-Conventional Level, including the punishment and obedience orientation stage and the instrumental purpose orientation stage. I believe that the Privates primarily operated on the second stage because their primary concern was achieving revenge for their fallen friend. However, when they realized that Captain Miller was not for killing the POW, they decided to try to appeal to him by pointing out the possible consequences of releasing the POW. While they argued on stage one, I do not believe they actually reverted from stage two to stage one, they were simply trying to appeal to Captain Miller in a way that they thought would be