The Christian Allegorical Structure of Platoon

Abstract

In criticism on Platoon (1986), Oliver Stone's allegorical methods and sources have been commonly misunderstood. At best, the Christian motifs which distinguish Stone's narrative of war and personal growth are only passingly recognized. It is easily demonstrated that these borrowed motifs are not deeply hidden secrets which must be deduced or invented from vague hints. Stone gives clear identifications of them, both in the film itself and in its published screenplay. But we should not be surprised; Stone has said that the war was for him a "religious" experience.1 In his "Foreword" to the screenplay of Platoon, Stone identifies Chris, the main character, as autobiographical; he also calls Chris "Ishmael," an "observer, caught between those two giant forces" Barnes and Elias. In addition to Melville's Moby Dick, Stone also declares mythic associations to Homeric myth and rock music; Barnes is an Ahab or Achilles, and Elias is a Jim Morrison (of The Doors) or Hector.2 But in fact, Melville, Homeric and pop music icons are left quite out of the substance of the story.3 Platoon's source is the Christian Bible, and, as it were, the lone "observer" is the movie's audience. Allegory is an ancient, respected sort of narrative, across which flicker tensions between "fiction" and "reality." Modern manifestations of allegory are at least as various as T.S. Eliot's "mythical method," Freud's and Jung's literary psychologies, the Marlboro Man, and William Manchester's battlefield seduction by a mythic "Whore of Death."4 We simply note that Stone, bringing allegorical methods to bear upon the Vietnam War, is in good company, as critics like John Hellmann, Albert Auster and Leonard Quart have shown, and as Michael Herr and Michael Cimino reveal in their screenplay notes and annotations to Full Metal Jacket and The Deer Hunter.5 Certainly, "realism" is important, and a historical fiction like Platoon may rightly be lauded (or criticized) in terms of it. But realism is an uncertain concept and remains subordinate to storytelling or, in nonfiction settings, to the rationalized forms of historical narrative.6 For example, when among her praises for his powers of versimilitude, Pauline Kael complains of Stone's literary pretensions-"too much filtered light, too much poetic license, and too damn much romanticized insanity"7-she understresses that Platoon, good or bad, likable or not, is necessarily popular art first, historical representation second. But a critique of the "art" in Platoon, as with any film, can easily fall prey to speculation and generalization; my primary purpose here is quite simply to document Stone's allegorical structure. The film begins with a title snipped from Ecclesiastes 11:9, "REJOICE, O YOUNG MAN, IN THY YOUTH" (11).8 Flooding the soundtrack is Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings, stately and, as Tom O'Brien suggests, "elegiac,"9 setting an ironically contrasting tone. Stone does not complete the quoted verse, which ends ". . . for all these things God will bring thee into judgement." What is missing reveals the depth of his ironic direction. Until this verse in its eleventh chapter, the Book of Ecclesiastes says nothing about "judgement." Now, however, it resolves its well-known existentialism through a less often noticed orthodoxy of moral absolutes. The Old Testament voice says that not only does our dust return to the earth and our spirits return to God (12:7), but directs us to "Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgement, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil" (12:13-14). In other words, there is no existential dilemma. As Stone has described his artistic caveat, "You have to make films as an idealist. You've got to make them to the greater glory of mankind."10 And through the mythos level of his film, Stone returns to this orthodoxy of moral absolutes again and again. The names of the characters are the simplest keys to Stone's typologies. …