There are two narrative conflicts that are central to the film:
a.)Sargeant Walsh (Sean Penn) v. Witt;
b.)Colonel Tall (Nick Nolte) v. Captain Staros (Elias Koteas)...
Both deal with the indiviual v. the communal, but they differ in the situations they focus on...
In the second situation, Colonal Tall represents the self interested individual, his efforts always concentrated on his own benefit... even the few actions he does take to benefit others -- the assignment of several commendations, finally ordering the men get water -- are intended to benefit him above all... he participates in the communal, the company, but only for it's capacity to bestow glory upon him... Captain Staros on the other hand, feels the immense burden of the communal... his primary interest is in the good of the company... the concept of the ocmpany as a family, of the soldiers as the captain's sons, is nothing new in the genre of the war film -- here it is an essential part of the themes in the film...
The roles become a little more complex in the other conflict... for Welsh, self interested individuality is not an exertion of the self, it's a last recourse in a world where the individual has no control over anything else... whereas Staros feels the burden of communal, Welsh suffers under the oppressive burden of indivuality... Witt, by contrast, begins the film relishing in the spirit of the communal in the form of an indigenous village... much of the remainder of the film hovers around the breakdown of this idyllic coexistence & Witt's search for calm in the face of death, the same calm where he says his mother found immortality in her death...
The terms of these conflicts are played out in the film in terms of nature, particularly in the elements of fire, water, land, light & the plantlife...
Fire in the film represents the communal... sitting in the brig for going AWOL, Witt stares into the flame of a match while talking about how C company are "his people"... Staros turns his facr towards a candle flame while praying "let me not betray my men"... most telling is Witt's voice over: "Maybe all men got one soul... one big self. Everyone looking for salvation by himself, each like a coal drawn from the fire."... the numerous explosions of the film may even reflect the concept of the communal spirit as a flame while simultaneously indicating the complexitiesof belief in a communal spirit in a war that so divides the people involved...
Land represents the same thing in the film that is has historically... "Property"! says Welsh after risking his life to give the dying man morphine: "Whole fucking thing's about property!" the entire campaign is in fact about property, about owning the lans... Charlie Company is sent in to take Guadacanal from the Japanese, & most of the early portion of the film concerns the taking of a hill, dubbed "the rock"... "It's high ground by night fall," commancds Colonel Tall, & he has a special interest in taking the Rock... for Tall possessing the land means the same thing that it meant to the bourgeoise in the French Revolution: status, power, authority, success...
Water imagery in the film is signifigantly more complicated... in the case of Private Bell (Ben Chaplin), the "Great Waters" seperate him from his wife... in another instance, he describes them as one being. flowing together like "water"... one of the numerous dreamlike sequences of Bell & his depicts her wading out into the ocean, beckoning him to "come out where I am"... water is also of dire importance to th eocmpany, & serves as the primary conflict between Colonial Tall & Captain Gaff (John Cusak), the latter stressing th eimportance of getting water to the men while the former attempts to press them onward... Keck's (Woody Harrelson) last action before death is to bequeath his canteen to a nearby soldier mentioning that "there's still some water left in it."... on, leave, the men wash themselves in the ocean & a downpour of rain, grappling with the humanity they forfeited in their raid on the Japenese village... visual occurances of the ocean are almost too numerous to catalog: the camera lingers on th emilitary boats cutting through the water, on the river where Witt last meets the Japenese, on the children swimming both in the film's beginning and after Witt's death... at times these representations seem contradictory: how can the water both separate & connect? Th eone thing that remains fixed is the conflict between the water and the land...
"Still believing in the beautiful light?" Welsh asks Witt... "How do you do that.?" many of the usual associations apply here -- light is serenity, peace, happiness, good... but in this case, light isn't placed into conflict with the forces of some eternal dark... rather, the conflict is between people attempting to take in the light...
"We were a family." Says Witt, returning to a now less idyllic native village. "Now we're turned against each other, each standing in each other's light. How'd we let it slip away?" The answer is revealed in mostly visual terms, in the numerous low angle shots of the jungle canopy, of light sifting through the ceiling of leaves, & in th eimages of vines choking th elife from trees. The plantlife here alludes to the cruel competitiveness of nature, particularly as reflected in the struggle of the film's characters, each standing in the other's way in order to obtain their own goals. Witt continues: "This great evil... [w}hat seed, what root did it come from?... Who's killing us?... Does our ruin benefit the earth?"
How interesting then is the film's final image of a single rock in the middle of a placid body of water, a single plant growing from it's surface & the final assertion that "all things shine?"