Stanley Kubricks Full Metal Jacket is a Vietnam War movie made for the sole purpose of

showing the public what war is really like in affecting the lives of the soldiers. The soldiers not
only are trained as marines to make sure they not only humble themselves but lose themselves. It
is a wakeup call to anyone who will ever think about joining the marines. The marines are one of
the hardest trained men in the military. Kubricks was able to give us a deep relationship with the
soldiers in this film. The drill sergeant was not only hard on the soldiers but he talked down to
them in such a way that was hard to believe a person could talk this way. If they could only have
a right to stand up for themselves, or as they would try to and talk out of line the sergeant would
make them do push up or scream down their throats. There was a time the sergeant mentioned to
them there was no race while he muttered loudly racist words when defining their race. It was
harsh as he drilled them about everything they did wrong while mentioning their sexual body
parts. When the soldiers are running around in their underwear with their rifles and singing about
the only two things important to them it seem a little male shove nest and awkward for even
them to be doing. The name calling was the worst of it with the gay slandering sounding
extremely abusive. The worst thing a man wants to hear is for another man calls him a lady. It
seemed no matter what the sergeant said to them it was never positive. The sergeant Hartman’s
job has every right to harass them until they break, and if they break they are no longer qualified
enough to be a marine. It is almost as though they have to become robotic without a conscience.

At some point it was hard to sit and watch Stanley Kubrick’s harsh reality of what the Vietnam
War vets had to experience in the war showing violence along with harsh language. The old
school style of the way they treated the military showed how if one must enroll in the military he
has to leave behind his identity forever. This is a clear sign at the beginning of the film when
showing the men getting all their heads shaved off representing their loss of who they were
before. It is a loss of identity and now the old man is dead to them and the new man is now
owned by the military. There are no words allowed in the military in training from the marines.
They speak only when spoken to and if they speak out of order there are serious consequences
such as verbal and physical abuse. It was only a matter of time before breaking down and losing
it. Only the strong can survive the marines and there was proof of this Kubrick showed us at the
very beginning. The torture of being treated like a baby because he acted like one was not only
humiliating but one could only take so much before blowing off his steam. The steam he let off
was because he was never mentally capable of handling the stress that came with being a marine.
They should never have allowed him in the marines in the first place. It is when he starts to talk
to himself after so much abuse had already been planted. It was only a matter of time before he
killed the sergeant Hartman and then himself.

Although it was Hartman’s job to ridicule and tear apart these men at boot camp, there were no
psychological evaluations strong enough to detect the mental problems he clearly had, thus
leaving him vulnerable and able to snap at any given time? In today’s military they would never
allow someone with disabilities be in the marines, especially training them to be killers with no
conscience. It was a unfair situation in the hard core training he went through while being
punished for his disability instead of kicked out of the marines for his disability.