Military Brotherhood

Brotherhood

Tigerland is a perfect example of a family that does not fit the standard and widely accepted viewpoint of a nuclear family. The question that is hard to define is what a family is. Webster’s dictionary defines the family as two or more people who share goals and values, have long-term commitments to one another, and reside usually in the same dwelling place. In the past, present, and future the definition of the word family will have an ever changing meaning.

Whenever I hear the word family the first word that comes to my mind is unity. Unity in a way as which a group acts together for their own personal well-being. In the movie Tigerland, it is a perfect description of Webster’s dictionary definition. Tigerland is a movie about men that are being trained to go to Vietnam. Through many hard weeks of training and intense mental strain the soldiers depend on one another to help them persevere and make it through the training. In many ways soldiers are a family. All of the soldiers who are there share the same goal of becoming a soldier in the military and they usually do reside in the same dwelling place, the exact definition of Webster’s.

Many people have different viewpoints of what a family is. “What Family?” by Pauline Irit Erera analyzes the way a family has changed over many of the years. Erera also states that the family is something that cannot ever be defined due to how fast it is changing. During many of the militaries basic military training (BMT) there is a brotherhood that bonds with all of the other soldiers. All of the soldiers are all working for the same thing, they all want to become soldiers in the military; however, they can not achieve this task alone. That is where they all share the common goal and they all live under the same roof. My brother came back from BMT and he told me that he had twenty new brothers that he would die for. I was immediately stunned. I looked at him with military issued glasses (They call them birth control glasses) and asked what he had meant. He told me that living under the same roof with all of them men and their group successfulness all depended on one another. He also said that the drill instructors never looked at them individually, but instead looked at them as one, as a unit. If there was one weak link then they were all weak links. In the movie Tigerland, Colin Farrell likes his men so much that goes to the extent of getting them out of the military because he is scared that they