Full Metal Jacket Symbolism

Stanley Kubrick directs Full Metal Jacket, a Vietnam War film. Full Metal Jacket gets its name from the bullets, the type of bullets that the Marines use for target practice during basic training. In addition, Zivah Perel states, “ a full metal jacket bullet does not explode upon impact; instead it penetrates deep into the target” (226). This symbolizes the deep indoctrination of the Marine recruits at Parris Island. Full Metal Jacket is about American culture, Marines, and symbolism that penetrates deep into the characters.
Full metal Jacket is about the symbolism and language of not only Marines’, but also American’s in general.
Full Metal Jacket is about American culture,Marines in action,and the importance of the symbolism and language

Where the drill instructor, Hartman, breaks the recruits spirit and “strips them of their freedom, their pride, (and) their names”(Corliss 66). In doing so, Hartman breaks all the recruits down, so they can rise up in the brotherhood of the Marine Corp together. At basic training, a cleansing of femininity is done to refine the masculine killers within. One of the ways Joker shows his masculinity is by killing the female sniper, which also symbolizes killing the femininity in Joker himself. Though it is impossible to remove all femininity from a man, it is the goal of the Marine Corp to suppress

Portraying war itself, brutal and hard to bare. The language is the worst in regards to women, crude and demeaning. At Parris Island, the recruits were told to give their rifles girls names, then in a later scene, told that their rifles are just tools and they are the true killers. This insinuates that women are as tools too, adding to the on going theme of double meanings throughout the film. Thomas Doherty writes “ In Full Metal Jacket, the language is splendid, a lyric bombardment of raw Marine obscenity” (Doherty 26). This sums up how vulgar the language is in Full Metal Jacket, which makes it more authentic and true to the Marine