Saving Private Ryan Essay, Research Paper

While fighting in a war many unexpected things can happen. In “Saving Private Ryan” Tom Hanks and his squad were givin an unexpected task to retrieve a certain private in the mass amounts of people fighting in the war. The men thought it was a assignment they should not have to do, because they were risking the lives of themselves to rescue one other man. Being forced to go out into this mission their squad ended up taking on 2 casualties. Saving Private Ryan was worth it, but along the way the group recieves 2 casualties and express their feelings about the mission.

The reason the army retrieved Private Ryan was because his brothers had already died in combat, and he had to carry on the family name. Carrying on the family name is extremely important to most families, and unfortunatly many family names were halted due to deaths from warring. When in war many men wonder how their families will feel if they die, and it upsets them. In the scene where the squad’s medic is shot and dying, his final words were “mommy, mommy..” he was thinkin of his mother. I think the squad members (althought not wanting to take the risks to save Ryan) in one way wanted to save Ryan, because they wanted to at least give Ryan’s mother one thing to be happy about.

If one man lives after one battle, he may kill 10 men in the next one. While in the church resting, Tom Hanks states that for every man that dies under his command another 10 may have lived. He is trying to say no matter what the mission people will die, for the sole objective which is to win the war. If they did this mission or not, they would have ended up killing axis powers until the war ended. While the squad’s mission is to save one man, and risk all their lives on the way they kill axis powers until they reach their objective.

During the travels to save Ryan 2 men in the squad die. In the scene in the field a man in the squad says “lets go around the germans”(whom were in the field securly defending an area with machine guns). Tom Hanks says they will attack the Germans, because no matter what their sub-objective is their main objective is to win the war, and to accomplish that they kill the Germans. After this mini-battle the squad loses their medic to gun shot wounds, and a member of the squad says he is quitting the mission and going home no matter what the orders. Tom Hanks then explains that he doesnt care at all about Ryan, and all he cares about is completing the mission to earn his right to go home.

Saving Private Ryan was worth it, but along the way the group recieves 2 casualties and express their feelings about the mission. While the squad saved private Ryan, and rewarded Ryan’s mother with some amount of happiness, they lost 6 men from their squad. While one mothers son was saved, 6 other mothers were devistated with news of their sons death’s. However if the men did not die on this mission they probably would have died somewhere else.

In the end the war was won, Ryan was saved, and all the men in the squad did their jobs in not only saving private Ryan, but winning the war.