Themes: idea that occurs or pervades a work
*Courage, manhood, self-preservation, and disregard for human life.

In the book and the movie, The themes are courage, manhood, self-preservation, and disregard for human life. In the book Henry has to deal with all of these. At the beginning of the book he has no courage, he runs away from battle, and he doesn't prove to himself that he has any courage or that he is a man. He later proves that he has courage, and shows that he is becoming a man. He also has problems with self-preservation because he runs away from battle because he is scared. His problem isn't disregard for human life, he isn't scared to kill. He is just scared to be killed.
In the movie, I think all of the men showed that they have courage because none of them really ran away from battle, and most of them ended up dying. The only lack of courage anyone showed was when the guy wanted to leave there mission because they didn't want to shoot the guy that killed one of their friends. I don't think any of them have any disregard for human life, besides the guy that doesn't want anyone to be killed.

*Symbols
*The dead soilder, and the the flag

The flag- The flag is a symbol in both the book and the movie. The flag represents what you are fighting for, it means everything in a war. When in battle, the person carrying the flag is always in the front, it shows a great deal of courage and bravery because there is a good chance your going to be shot. Henry and Wilson showed their courage by both trying to go for the flag. In the movie, when you go into battle, you always have to make sure someone is carrying the flag.

The dead Soilder- The dead soilder is a symbol for Henry, it makes him realize everything about the war and what is going on around him. The soilder also represents bravery, it shows Henry that the man isn't a coward, and that he should be more like that, it makes him feel kind of guilty. In the movie, some of the guys that were doing the mission died, who showed there bravery and courage.

Motifs:
*noise/silence
*light/dark
*clean/dirty
*youth/maturity

Noise/silence
When there is silence, the soilders are usually thinking about what is to come and how they are going to act upon war. There is silence when there is no battle going on anywhere. When there is noise, that is when a battle is going on and it is very loud. There is the sounds of gunshots and people yelling and screaming and it is just chaos.