A Few Good Men Rhetorical Analysis

1. Passage 1 (page[s] 151). “His face was floating in the air in front of me; I zeroed in on it and slugged it with all the force in my body, hard enough to mash any mosquito in poor health. His eyes closed and he slumped to the deck……He got slowly up. “Okay Johnnie” he said, shaking his head, “I’ve had my lesson. You won’t have any more lip out of me…. Nor out of anybody in that section. Okay.” Juan was just promoted as a section leader over the senior member of the section, Ace. Ace gave Juan a bit of disrespect and did not view him as the rightful section leader. However, Juan and Ace decided to settle their score in a brawl, where Ace was the clear winner. After Juan wakes up unconscious, Ace lets Juan punch him to finally settle the score. This passage resonates with Heinlein’s theme because it shows that in the military, life and people are different than civilians. Here the Mobilized Infantrymen settle their score, and move on as if it never happened. They do this because they know it is for the betterment of the platoon, constant arguing between superior and subordinate can be detrimental to survival in a combat scenario. A hand to hand brawl would not be accepted as a reasonable form of communication in the …show more content…
Passage 2 (page[s] 262). “Don’t forget that we’ll have help all around us, lots of help above us. All we need to worry about is our one little piece, just the way we rehearsed it.”
This passage takes place in the final chapter of the book, here Juan is talking to his platoon before making a drop. These final few words from Juan show that he now fully realizes that they are a part of a much larger team. His platoon is just one small moving piece of a much larger war machine. Shortly after this line, before deploying from the ship to combat, the ship’s captain plays the song “To the Everlasting Glory of the Infantry” to reinforce to the reader that serving in the military is to serve something that will last

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