Born on the 4th of July
At the very beginning of the movie; Born on the 4th of July, we got to see when Ronnie is a little boy. He and his family had gathered up together with the other citizens in town. They celebrated the arrivals of the veterans, who have coming back home from the war. Everybody pays tribute to them as they walk through the city. There is a huge parade with bands and everybody are cheering and applauding. There is an exciting moment and everybody seems happy, except from the veterans themselves, which Ronnie noticed. The veterans who have arrived back home is not only physically injured, but also mentally damaged. They are depressed and unhappy as they receive the audience’s cheers.
Already this early in the move you feel the depression that Tim O’Brien, Rat Kiley, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross and the rest of their group are carried with them, during the war and after the war. A few scenes after the parade scene we got to see Ronnie and his friends sitting by a table on a restaurant where they are discussing their departure to Vietnam. I could immediately relate that to Tim and his friends and obtain a better picture of them. All of them wanted to be brave and fight for their country, even though if it was, as well as in Tim O’Brien’s case, against their own will. They wanted to be social accepted and live up to the society’s expectations of them. “How they were sending me off to fight a war they didn’t understand and didn’t want to understand. I held them responsible” Page 43.
All of them were sent to fight in Vietnam, without the knowledge of what to expect afterwards, except that they would come back home as heroes. During the war in the movie, we got to see when Ronnie together with his men shoot down a house in Vietnam. When they later entering the house, they are chocked. The house is filled with mothers and children that have been hurt and injured. The men start to panic and Ronnie immediately becomes desperate and try to help them....