I wasn’t expecting it, I just looked up and there it was: the disgusting, bloody, mauled body of a dead soldier. The shot was brief and I do not remember if he was strung up on a tree, if he was hanging, or what not. I was not in class the day prior due to a sleepless night led to sickness, so I was not able to watch the first part of the movie. I remembered that our class was supposed to watch a war movie; Ms. Klein was deciding between “Born on the Fourth of July” and “Platoon”. I vaguely remember her saying something about one of the movies being a slight bit, well, gruesomely horrifying. Due to a number of things that were due in my classes that day, when I walked into my English room, I was not thinking about the warnings that I was given. Then I looked up. Shocked I guess you could say was my first reaction. I was a little too surprised to be disgusted. Don’t sound so disappointed, I became sick to my stomach all too soon. It was hard for me to concentrate on a lot of “Platoon” during the first day of class. I looked at the screen only half of the time; I buried my head in current work so as to hide my eyes from the disasters on TV. I would occasionally look up and sure enough, each time I proceeded to lift my head, I squealed, and put it back down. I remember scenes of teenage boys being tortures with bullets, old women and men being killed, girls being raped, and children being put in front of a firing squad. That night, I couldn’t control the terrible scenes that flooded my head as I tried to sleep. The next day, I had learned to deal with the violence a little more than the previous day. I watched almost all of it, having to turn away only occasionally. The emotions that the violence expressed held me taut; it no longer turned me away from the screen, but drew me in, showing me further the horrible nature of war. Even though director Oliver Stone may have exaggerated situ...
