Full Metal Jacket AB

At first it seems that the movie is really only broken into two parts, that really characterize the idea of the war in Vietnam and the ideas, be fiefs, and treacherous training of the Marine Core. But when going over it again, I realized that there is three distinct parts, The training, Joker's time being a reporter at the base, and Joker's time in "The Shit" as many soldiers explained it.

The first part at Paris Island gives us a great sense of the hardship these men or should I say young adults had to endure before the war. They went through terrible physical abuse, but the biggest impact, as seen when Pile shoots the Sargent, is the mental abuse these recruits went through on a daily basis. They were trained to kill, they were strained to survive and protect their country, but more importantly, they were trained to become a brotherhood, to protect one another and become a family. A family that will always live on even when parts of it died and I think the first part of the movie was really dedicated to not only the training of US soldiers but to the Marine Core itself.

The second part of the movie involves Joker's time in country, but not in "the Shit". He was a journalist so he got to go around and write stories about to war to report back to home, but much of this part is dedicated to show how worked up these young men were to see the action they trained for, but without realizing what they were truly going to face. It also shows how the military was not truthful in their stories by any means. They would lie in their reports to tell the American people what they wanted to hear so that the troops and the government could keep the little support they had for being involved in Vietnam. I think this is a very important part to express how people really don't know what war is like unless you have gone toe to toe or face to face with it.

The last part of the film involves Joker being in country, but also being in "the Shit" as a reporter, but eventually as a soldier. Joker finally gets to face what he had always been waiting for and i think he realizes that its something he really didn't want to do, but he does anyway because he has already gone that far and I think that whole idea is portrayed in the scene when he is about to kill the woman solider and takes quite a while to do so. At first he is like we can't leave her like this, but he didn't want to be the one to waste her. So it is something that he wanted to do, something he never thought he would face, but in the end had to do it, and did it for his brothers, his family, and his country. And by killing the woman it shows how these men had to face such horrible things like women and children running around with guns that they had no choice but to kill in order to save their own lives. And all the horror the a solider has to endure after the war due to experiences similar to the last killing scene in the movie.

To me the Mickey Mouse song represented the idea of family and brotherhood among the marines. They had all gone through the same thing and they were all there for the same reason and singing that song was a way to bring them together and in a sense have a little fun while they are there. It is a song that they all would know, that they might pull from their childhood, but with in the song some of the lyrics discuss joining the family and anyone can be part of the family because even though brothers in the group die, the family must live on and to never let the Marine Core die.