The Irony of War Displayed in Apocalypse Now (blog 4)

In the movie Apocalypse Now, directed and produced by Francis Ford Coppola, the main character Captain Willard is assigned to a secret operation of killing Colonel Kurtz. This mission is assigned because they believe Kurtz has gone insane by breaking away and starting his own Military unit out of Cambodia. He has completely isolated himself and abandoned the original plan. In the beginning of the film, Captain Willard is reviewing all of Kurtz' files but sees no wrong or traces of insanity in them. Kurtz had impressive records and Captain Willard questioned how he would be able to accomplish this task. However, just like any other command given, he had made a commitment and could not let his men down. As the movie went on I discovered that Kurtz was only crazy because of the evils of war. As humans, we can only take so much before we hit our breaking point. Kurtz was affected by war simply before the other soldiers. The generals he broke away from wanted him dead because we went on a killing spree once he became insane but ironically the same men were killing random innocent people while on the mission which doesn't make them much different than Kurtz. The irony discovered throughout the film is each individual that enters into any warfare is equal and has basically the same mind set, which can change due to the experience during warfare and violence witnessed. Each soldier is commanded to inhumanly acts and each is affected differently but putting that aside, every soldier kills. No one can judge one over the other for killing.