Fear and Duty

In Platoon at the final battle scene Oliver Stone creates the emotions of fear and sense of duty. When the Vietnamese start to attack the soldiers all at first fight like normal trying to repel the sudden of attack from all sides but as soon the lines start to break down the overwhelming fear of death takes over and takes control over some of the soldiers. For example the soldier fighting alongside Charlie Sheen wants to retreat back with the soldier heading back to the camp because the enemy is everywhere. However though their is fear in Charlie Sheen is belief of duty takes control and keeps him there and his fellow comrade in the foxhole stays beside him. This fear resonates all over even to one of the sergeants who instead of fighting to the death hides himself under one of the dead soldiers to prevent being found and shot. The emotion of fear helps to take control of the soldiers and shows the audience that these gung ho soldiers that we saw throughout the film at times are in all reality just as human as the audience. The audience can relate to the scene by when you watch the film you see this fear and at the same time while I was watching the scene I imagined myself in this situation and quite honestly might have done the same. A person might say they would stand strong but when fear takes control of a person anything can ensue. Along side this sense of fear at parts a sense of duty takes place within some of the soldiers such as how Charlie Sheen maintained his position as long as possible even though the audience can see in his eyes the fear that is going through his body, but at the same time the stare that is mentioned in FMJ comes across his face. Sheen just stares down his gun and is a different man from what he was earlier in the film, he no longer is the new guy but has evolved into a soldier. The animal instinct takes control over his body and out of pure adrenaline his body takes control.



Oliver Stone makes the tone of the scene through these emotions he puts across through his actors and their actions. He uses the emotions to show the audience what our soldiers went through and to bring natural feelings to a situation that most of the audience has never been part of. This common emotion of fear helps a person realize how horrific war trully is and brings to light what our soldiers had to go through.

Not only does fear take hold of the soldiers in Platoon but in FMJ also, at the end of the movie when the platoon watches eightball get sniped along with one of their fellow comrades no one else has the desire to to try and rescue their fellow comrades. The fear that they too will be shot just the same overwhelms them and keeps all the men except for animal mother whos sense of duty to his fellow comrade takes control of him and he goes to his friends get rid of the sniper to try to save their lives. With this act of bravery by animal mother the sense of duty in a few of the soldiers takes place to follow suit. Kubrick strikes at fear just the same as Stone to show how the soldiers even though they called themselves "killers" they too were just normal human beings just like the rest of the audience.