Warped Sense of Reality

Both in Apocalypse Now and The Things They Carried, we see how war distorts all sense of reality.

In Apocalypse now, we constantly see scenes of soldiers bombing forests and causing destruction. It's clear that the soldiers are entertained and amused and, in a way, find beauty in this destruction. In war, war becomes you. While there's plenty of violence and fighting and whatnot in this movie, its the way Coppola directs that helps provide a view of the war from a soldier's standpoint. That's why music plays during scenes of destruction, to add emphasis on how the soldier's feel towards things like that, rather than how the average "war-free" mind would view these scenes of destruction. Does that make much sense? I hope it does. This is similar to O'Brien's writing because O'Brien brings attention to the little things within war (like the white blossoms and sunlight and a pink river--rather than details of Lemon's death and all the gore that must've come with it). It's that when we (students, or anyone who hasn't had to personally go to/through war) think of war, we think of all the obvious things: the violence, explosions, etc. With O'Brien and Coppola, they show war through soldier's eyes--which helps show that what we think of war and what soldiers think of war are complete opposite. They can see the beauty in it, while we can only see the destruction. O'Brien and Coppola show us the way in which soldiers/veterans think and how they view reality.