Pyle-driven democracy

He hears a cacophony of screaming. Just imagining the pain that this soldier has inflicted on an innocent man who did not deserve the beating causes him to shut his eyes, and cover his ears. Should he have followed the other compatriots in committing this evil and unjust act? The split mind that his drill sergeant installed in him is the main reason he cannot come up with an answer to that question. He has been trained to hurt. He has been trained to kill.

Private Joker, from Full Metal Jacket, is lying in bed hearing his mentee letting all the air out of his lungs in the form of screams. Although he has not entered the combat zone yet, no training in the world can help him solve the war that has already erupted in his head. Private Joker was the closest thing to a friend that Private Pyle had at this Marine Corps academy. But he was trained to act as a group, as an army. Therefore, he listened and followed. He beat Private Pyle until his cries swallowed the hallway.

So the real question is, why did it seem so easy for Private Joker to beat his friend with a passion? If he really hated him, he would not have had to protect his eyes and ears from the evil sounds that followed.

These privates were being trained to fight in the Vietnam War. They were being taught to have no mercy, and to feel no pain when their enemy was unjustly dealt with. Their goal was to kill, not to understand why. By using repetitive phrases about Uncle Sam, and chants about the Marine Corps, drill sergeant Hartman implants a very dangerous seed into the minds of these soldiers. They are led to believe that if a mass amount of people have a certain opinion, and decide on a certain act, then they cannot possibly be wrong. They must be obeyed, for they know what is good for the common person.

At that scene’s level, this seems just about right. Private Joker trusts his fellow soldiers enough to think that he might be doing the right thing by beating up his mentee. Maybe this will teach him a lesson and will make him a better student. Then, as he lays himself down on the bunk below the man he has just scarred physically and mentally, he finds that he must shield his ears and eyes.

But let us look at it from (what I think is) the director’s view point. I believe the director put this scene in the movie to not only give a reason for Private Pyle’s slow but sure psychological breakdown, but to also show how these soldiers killed many innocent people in villages and fought in a country where most did not appreciate them. Vietnam. The mass amounts of people, in this case, were not the fellow soldiers, but instead The United States of America.

As long as the citizens and government of America thought it was the correct thing to do, why would the soldiers try to understand more than the gold plated blanket of democracy they were told to spread over Vietnam? Why would they try to understand the reason behind Vietnam’s animosity? They didn’t. They just closed their eyes and their ears, and followed orders.