This movie showed a great sense of nationalism and patriotism. The men that were portrayed risked and lost their lives for their country without question. WW2 was one of our biggest wars to date and it not only brought the country together, but it made us stronger. Both of my grandparents lived through WW2 and the stories they tell of the country at the time are crazy. My grandmother who was 19 at the time saw 75% of her school disappear to the war over night. The morning announcements in her school on a Monday morning told them they had declared war with Germany and that all the boys were being drafted this week, and within the week all of her friends were gone. She had to stay at home and take all the jobs that the men had held before so the country could keep running. My grandfather was drafted as a 19-year-old to be an airborne medic with only a year of medical training. His medical infantry was dropped into all the battles that were filmed in this movie. It is amazing to be to get a glimpse into the situations that my grandfather was dropped into. The movie not only shows the battles, but it emphasizes the feelings felt by all the soldiers. The scene that impacted me the most was when the group of soldiers was searching through a bag of dog tags, with the line of soldiers walking by. You could see it in their faces that that bag of dog tags would be all that is left of them, they would be degraded to a single piece of metal in a bag. The emotions that came out in that scene showed how degrading the war was to individuality. The soldiers were sent to basically be killed and no one would care except their families who most likely would not be able to see them again, just a piece of metal with their name on it.
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One reply on “Saving Private Ryan”
I completely agree with your point of view on the matter. Saving Private Ryan was one of the most emotionally stimulating movie I had seen in a long time. I had even seen it before, but to understand the crushing pain the Ryan mother must have been going through, it was totally rational that the general sent out an entire infantry to find this one man and bring him home to his family. I feel that your point was completely true in the fact that some families only received a dog tag back from their son after the war. I also think this is the reason it was so important that they had to bring Private Ryan back home. This mother had already received 3 dog tags as a result of the war, she need something way more tangible to hold than just a piece of metal to remember a person.