Comparing Platoon And The Things They Carried

The Vietnam War was one of the most harrowing in history. Rather than the treatment of innocent Vietnamese townspeople or the gruesome nature of Vietcong traps, the most horrifying part of the war was the consistent theme of evil triumphing over good. This is shown best in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried and Oliver Stone’s “Platoon” (1986). Morality is explored throughout both of these stories, and they expose the gory underbelly of the Vietnam War. I believe the most horrifying theme of the Vietnam war is the lack of morality and abandoned ethics. This is exemplified in the story “How To Tell A True War Story” from The Things They Carried. One of Tim O’Brien’s soldier friends, Curt Lemon, is killed by a trap while playing catch with another soldier, Rat Kiley. Soon after finding camp the same night, the soldiers found

I don’t believe he ever had morals, but I do believe the morals he had were broken due to Curt Lemon’s death. Rat killing the buffalo can be used as a metaphor for the evil of the Vietnam War, killing the good and innocent. This metaphor is also shown in Platoon. The Village Scene shows particularly disgusting behavior from its soldiers. The platoon stumbles upon a village and takes all of their men hostage and rounds up the women and children, only after burning the entire village down and destroying their crops and harvest from the past year. Sergeant Barnes, one of their leaders, goes on to integrate a man about the stores of food, and when his wife becomes upset, he shoots her point blank. She had done nothing wrong, other than defend her husband. Such brutality is the sign of a man who has lost all care for morals or ethics, and is deemed by Sergeant Elias as a war crime. Even Chris Taylor, the main character in “Platoon”, must defend the young girls of the village after he finds the soldiers attempting to rape them, “She’s a fucking human