Hacksaw Ridge Synopsis PDF

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Summary

The class was required to watch Hacksaw Ridge and answer questions based on the movie. These questions were: Who are the main characters and what were their roles? Write a summary of the movie without doing a recitation of Wikipedia and go into detail. What are the ethical/leadership issues dealt wi...

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Hope Badger Hacksaw Ridge Synopsis 1. Desmond Doss Captain Jack Glover (Doss’ captain) Smitty Ryker (Squad member that is saved by Doss on the first day of fighting, ultimately killed)  Tom Doss (Desmond’s father)  Dorothy Schutte (Desmond’s wife)  Bertha Doss (Desmond’s mother)  Harold Doss (Desmond’s brother, goes by Hal)  Lieutenant Manville  Colonel Stelzer  Milt Zane (Holleywood)  Sergeant Howell (Desmond’s sergeant that tries to get him court martialed for not following orders ie refusing to handle a rifle and work on Saturdays) 2. Desmond Doss lives in Virginia and nearly kills his brother while roughhousing in 1925. His father is able to make sure that Hal is okay and goes to beat him but his mother interferes. His family are members of the seventh-day Adventists, which along with this event, reinforces the belief in the commandment of Thou Shalt not kill. Doss goes to the local hospital with an injured man in 1940 and meets Dorothy Schutte. He is interested in medical work and joins the army after Pearl Harbor. Tom Doss is a veteran of WWI and deals with PTSD, which has resulted in alcoholism. He is violent towards his family and is upset by the decision. Desmond proposes to Dorothy and she accepts as long as he weds her before he leaves. Desmond excels at basic training under Sergeant Howell but refuses to handle a rifle and train on Saturdays due to his religious beliefs. Howell and Glover attempt to have him discharged due to Section 8 but are denied because religious beliefs do not fall under mental illness. Doss is subjected to hard labor to get him to leave voluntarily and he is beaten one night by other soldiers, whom he does not name. After completing basic training, he is released on leave. He is arrested for insubordination because he refused to carry a firearm and cannot marry Dorothy during leave as he intended to. Dorothy and Glover try to persuade Doss to plead guilty but refuses because of his beliefs. His father was able to bring a letter from a brigadier general stating that Doss is protected by the US Constitution. This leads to the charges being dropped and he is able to marry Dorothy on leave. Doss is deployed to the Pacific Theater, specifically to the Maeda Escarpment. Doss is able to save Smitty but Smitty dies during the counter attack the next morning. Doss reveals that he refuses to hold a firearm because his drunken father attacked his mother with a gun. Doss had stepped in and almost kills his father with the gun. He vowed that after that event, he would never touch another gun. After the counterattack, several of Doss’s squad members on injured and left on the battlefield. Doss goes back to the battlefield to rescue as many as he can. Doss is able to rescue Howell and they are able to return to base. Not all the ones he pulled from the battlefield survived. Doss agrees to continue to work on Saturday as Glover states that the other troops need him there to rally them. He agrees and the operation is delayed so he can participate in Sabbath prayers. They are able to overcome the Japanese defenses with   

Hope Badger Hacksaw Ridge Synopsis reinforcements. During an ambush of Japanese pretending to surrender, Doss deflects enemy grenades and is wounded by one. The battle is won and he is taken off the battlefield with the bible given to him by Dorothy. Desmond Doss, who the story is based off of, rescued 75 soldiers at Hacksaw Ridge and was award the Medal of Honor by President Harry S Truman. Doss and Dorothy were married until her death in 1991 and he died in 2006. 3. The most obvious ethical issue is the struggle between killing and healing. The is a belief that the soldiers should be completely okay with killing the Japanese because of what they did at Pearl Harbor and throughout the movie, soldiers describe the Japanese as monsters. The movie portrays them as being brutal on the battlefield and showing no mercy but I noticed that it didn’t go into detail about the societal effects going on in the world. For the Japanese, many of them saw that what they were doing was right and it was the same for the Americans. However, the Japanese saw that it was a great honor to die in the battlefield and it is more honorable to die than be captured. It was not that they were being brutal because they were horrible monsters but because of their societal beliefs that they were taught from a young age and it is something that the Americans didn’t understand. It is the same thing as the Americans growing up and being told that it is honorable to defend one’s country from a young age. It is contradictory though for those who life with family members who fought in wars like the Doss families. Although his father fought in the war, which is seen as honorable, Desmond and Hal didn’t have much respect for him because of his abusive nature resulting from the war. He was recovering from PTSD during a time where mental health had little to no treatment and the mentally ill were put in abusive asylums. He was left to deal the horrors of war by himself or risk being in the mental asylums and he dealt with the horrors of war with alcohol. It is a dilemma where he may have done an honorable thing to serve the country but did the country do an honorable thing by not offering them humane mental treatment? The citizens are expected to give up their personal freedoms during the war for the communal responsibility of war but Desmond fights this because why should he have to give up his personal beliefs and freedoms?...