Men of Honor
Although it may be difficult to believe that a man who was once pronounced dead on arrival could later become the first amputee diver to serve in the U.S. Navy as well as the first African-American to reach Master Diver status, Carl Brashear is the man who did just that. The movie Men of Honor, released in 2000, starring Cuba Gooding Jr. and Robert DeNiro, only touches on the tremendous adversities that Carl Brashear has faced throughout his life. His story is one of struggle and triumph, but his only goal was to follow his promise to his father, to succeed, no matter what obstacles were to overcome.
The movie is stunningly close to the real life experiences of Carl Brashear, which is not really typical for a Hollywood movie. One reason might be that Brashear’s story is so incredibly amazing that a Hollywood storywriter could almost write it. Carl was born in 1931 and grew up with sharecropping parents, who lived in segregated Kentucky. He did not have the chance for a good education as whites had, and life in general was much harder for blacks anyway. Carl wanted to join the Navy from an early age on. The film shows Cuba Gooding Jr. as Carl Brashear, who leaves his home to join the Navy. Throughout the movie, Carl’s promise to his father that he would not give up and always try to succeed, influences Brashear’s behavior and his will to achieve his goal, becoming a master diver. But the way to that goal would be long and very hard, and many obstacles were to overcome. Most African American Navy sailors were to be stewards, and there was no real chance to be promoted to anything else besides that. In both, history and movie, Carl had to break the old racist rules in order to make his way beyond the duties of a ste...
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...y to become its core substance, and the hurdles he overcomes. I think the movie achieved that goal.
Carl Brashear says his philosophy is, "love yourself, develop a positive attitude, set a goal and work toward it with all your might." He credits this as the key to his success. He would not take a no for an answer in order to serve his country, and never had any anger to those who faced him with hate and racism.
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Works Cited
Carl Brashear: The Real Action Hero. Fred Topel. © 2002 About.com, Inc.
Last Action Hero. Dir. John McTiernan. Columbia/Tri-Star Studios, June 18, 1993.
Men of Honor. Dir. George Tillman Jr. DVD. CBS/Fox Home Video, April 10, 2001
Men of Honor: The Story of Carl Brashear. Lawbuzz.com © 2000 Boz & Glazier, PLC.
Naval Institute History, Reference and Preservation. U.S. Naval Institute. 17 November 1989
Stephen. The Red Badge of Courage. Sculley Bradley, Richard Beatty, and E. Hudson Long Eds. New York: W.W. Norton, 1962.
To fully appreciate the significance of the plot one must fully understand the heroic journey. Joseph Campbell identified the stages of the heroic journey and explains how the movie adheres meticulously to these steps. For example, the first stage of the hero’s journey is the ordinary world (Campbell). At the beginning, the structure dictates that the author should portray the protagonist in their ordinary world, surrounded by ordinary things and doing ordinary tasks so that the author might introduce the reasons that the hero needs the journey in order to develop his or her character or improve his or her life (Vogler 35). The point of this portrayal is to show the audience what the protagonist’s life is currently like and to show what areas of his or her life are conflicted or incomplete. When the call to adventure occurs, the protagonist is swept away into another world, one that is full of adventure, danger, and opportunities to learn what needs to be learned. T...
Based on a true story, this biographical drama centered around Antwone “Fish” Fisher. In the beginning of the story, he was a sailor prone to violent outbursts. On the verge of being kicked out of the Navy for repeated fighting, he is sent to a naval psychiatrist for help. Refusing to open up, Dr. Davenport slyly slips his way into getting Antwone to talk. Antwone eventually breaks down and reveals a horrific childhood with neglect and abuse. With the help of Dr. Davenport, he is able to face his past and strive for success to find the family he has never met. At the same time, he is able to turn his life around and change it dramatically. In the end, he is reunited with both his father’s side of the family and his mother who has abandoned him.
Born in Virginia, to mother Martha Puller and father Matthew Puller, he grew to become a well recognized marine globally (Russell & Cohn, 2012). His father’s dead while he was 10 years did not stop him to achieve a high point career; in fact, his childhood lifestyle of listening to war stories...
Honor codes or systems have been established at many schools across the nation, including Paloma Valley High School. These rules dictate what the school defines as ethical and yet not every student in attendance upholds these rules. Paloma Valley High School’s honor codes regarding education require maintenance as students avoid enforcement of the guidelines, meaning unethical behaviors prevail in a rather honest environment.
The United States of America, in its short history, has given birth to numerous brave and honorable men. These men have helped shape and mold the country to what it is today. When someone thinks of men who have molded the United States, one might think of the Founding Fathers or early pioneers like Daniel Boone or Davy Crockett. One might also think of great presidents such as George Washington or Abraham Lincoln. These men laid the foundation of how the country should be led. There is one trait that all these great men possess, and that trait is determination. Determination is what fueled these American Renaissance men to do the great and brave things they did. There is one man who possessed an abundant amount of determination, and he was not going to let his physical circumstances get in the way of his goals in life. By the end of his presidency, he had changed the way the world looked at America. Despite his crippling disability, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was able to overcome his adversity and lead the United States out of the Great Depression and through most of World War II.
Throughout the ages, men and women have been at the heart of myths and legends, evolving into tragic heroes in large part due to the embellishment bestowed upon them over the ages. From Odysseus and Achilles to Brutus, Hamlet, and King Lear, epic poems have revolved around the tragic hero. Pat Tillman was a man of many aptitudes and virtues, never satisfied by the mediocre, striving for more adventure, more meaning, in his tragically short time on Earth, and personifying the phrase carpe diem. Even Pat Tillman had tragic flaws; his unwillingness to be typical, his undying loyalty to family and country, and his curiously concrete set of morals amalgamated to set in motion Tillman’s eventual death. These, whatever the outcome might have been, are not by any means, the archetypical tragic flaws. They are, as Jon Krakauer later described, “tragic virtues.” Where Men Win Glory is not solely a tribute to Pat Tillman. What makes it truly unique is its exhaustively comprehensive history preceding Tillman’s death, and equally essential, the events that transpired following his death, including the cover-ups, scandals, corruption, falsified documents, indignities, and lies that facilitated, also, in emphasizing the core themes, of which Tillman was the epitome. Tillman’s fidelity and devotion to the people whom he loved, the use of misinformation and cants surrounding his death, and others’ responses to what Tillman considered paramount in his life all played a key role in the tragedy of a man who won glory.
This movie is a wonderful production starting from 1960 and ending in 1969 covering all the different things that occurred during this unbelievable decade. The movie takes place in many different areas starring two main families; a very suburban, white family who were excepting of blacks, and a very positive black family trying to push black rights in Mississippi. The movie portrayed many historical events while also including the families and how the two were intertwined. These families were very different, yet so much alike, they both portrayed what to me the whole ‘message’ of the movie was. Although everyone was so different they all faced such drastic decisions and issues that affected everyone in so many different ways. It wasn’t like one person’s pain was easier to handle than another is that’s like saying Vietnam was harder on those men than on the men that stood for black rights or vice versa, everyone faced these equally hard issues. So it seemed everyone was very emotionally involved. In fact our whole country was very involved in president elections and campaigns against the war, it seemed everyone really cared.
This movie was inspiring and encouraging to anyone who is struggling with something. Overcoming his controversies in life became the main point of the movie. Knowing that this movie was based upon a true story inspires the people even more.
The movie overall had a tremendous impact on my personality since it made me realize that every successful man in the world whether its Bill Gates, Chris Gardner or Carlos Smith have gone through immense hardships, struggling phases and complications in their personal and professional life to achieve the status, prestige and respect that they have today. They could have accepted these problems to adjust themselves with the existent scenario and situations, but the actual triumph of these people lie in recognizing the fact that all these problems and toils are there germinate greater resistance, potential of perseverance and willpower in them in order to transform them into a person who is fearless and disciplined enough to handle any kind of difficulty with extreme wisdom and sagacity.
Schweikart, Larry, and Michael Allen. A Patriots History of the United States. Sentinel: Penguin inc., 2007. 529-532. Print.
Easy Company from its inception in July of 1942 to its disbandment at the end of World War II was an elite paratrooper force made up of “voluntary citizen soldiers” meaning they were in Easy Company of their own accord and for the most part where all previously not in any form of military. (Ambrose p. 16-17) "Easy company included three rifle platoons and a headquarters section. Each platoon contained three twelve-man rifle squads and a six-man mortar team squad.” Easy also had one machine gun attached to each of its rifle squads, and a 60mm mortar in each mortar team. The training they would endure was much more rigorous, as the conditions would be more perilous, “of the 500 officers who had volunteered, only 148 successfully completed the course. The enlisted men had it equally tough, with only 1,800 men being selected out of 5,300 volunteers” (Ambrose, 18) this left them feeling that themselves and the man watching their back would be much more prepared for battle than your average draftee.
understanding. I am a skeptic. The characters that he incorporates within his story, help to. establish a sense of the conditions and hardships that the country is experiencing. experiencing, and the presence of fear throughout the whole of the populace.
... historical significance of this film. When the film was made, it might have been considered a risk to cast Matthew Broderick as a valiant civil war leader. His past performances included childhood roles in movies such as Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, War Games, and Project X. In his first feature role as a serious actor, Broderick is believable and has just the right amount of emotion and dramatic resonance. Morgan Freeman is also well-cast as the patriarch of the group soldiers. His calm, yet powerful soliloquies of life as a hopeful slave painted many of the films non-battle scenes.