Unfortunately, I find myself with three essays and multiple tests this final week as well as your project due and will be unable to write an R.A. on "First Blood". I would, however, like to take the opportunity this blog presents me with to write out my thoughts on the film albeit with a slightly less formalized structure than would be mandatory for a satisfactory rhetorical analysis. It is also true that there are so many aspects of this film to discuss that I would hop around too much in a standard R.A. to present a good, consistent argument on any one topic. For that matter, I will now proceed to discuss the film in a slightly chronological manner.
Rambo is a man of little hope. Everything he had was in Vietnam - who he had been made into and his comrades (family) - and it was all left behind. He journeyed the nation for seven years trying to track down his former members of Baker Team only to find them all dead. The film begins as he tries to locate the one remaining member who may be alive, Delmar Barry. He approaches the house with a smile, full of the dream that he will finally reconnect with his dear friend. When Delmar's mother says that agent orange gave her son cancer and he died shortly after returning from Vietnam, Rambo breaks down. He discards the picture of his team and along with that picture passes all the hope Rambo once held for a better tomorrow and the dream of somehow reclaiming his past.
He proceeds to the local town of Hope. The town's very name suggests great situational irony considering all the trouble he will come to face there. After being arrested for vagrancy and wanting a meal in Hope, he is jailed. The police officers treat him quite poorly. One of them even resorts to beating Rambo with a nightstick and shooting him with a fire hose. These events remind him of previous tortures he experienced as a P.O.W. in Vietnam. When they try to shave Rambo, he has the final breakdown and viciously escapes from their custody. It is apparent that he is a man suffering from deep psychological disturbances. He has many of the symptoms associated with post-traumatic stress disorder as we discussed in Achilles in Vietnam.
I also found it very interesting in that after escaping, Rambo quickly returned to the jail to reclaim his hunting knife. I feel like this knife is somehow representative/symbolic of Rambo himself, and his return to retrieve it suggests (for myself at least) that perhaps he could not make it on his own without it. After loosing all his friends, respect, and dignity, this knife is the one thing he has left from his former life and the only thing which keeps him going. Maybe I am reading too much into it, but that is my perspective. One should also note Rambo's compassion. Even after his own maltreatment at the hands of the H.P.D., he tells the townspeople to "Get out of the way!" as he recklessly drives on a motorcycle across sidewalks and through streets to escape pursuit.
In many ways Rambo is the typical Hollywood action hero. He is the strong, attractive protagonist of a film designed with all the special effects and marketing attributed to Hollywood blockbusters. It was even criticized by many who accused it of having "comic book style dialogue and macho...mindless escapism" (Kipp 1). The way in which it significantly differs, however, is in all that Rambo embodies and represents.
Rambo, in the context of the film, is the man responsible for generating awareness for the wrongs committed against all the veterans upon their return to "The World." As he falls to his knees reciting a dramatic monologue just before collapsing into Colonel Trautman's arms and wailing like a small child, he is simultaneously releasing all the latent thoughts and ideas of the ill deeds committed against the veterans for all the world to see. The primary police officer, Will Teasle, once asked Trautman, "Who are you people?"; Rambo answers this through his actions and dialogue throughout the film which reveals them (and all troubled veterans for that matter) to be men so bonded through tragedy and suffering that they are closer even than family.
I hope you liked some of these ideas. Sorry I could not express them in an R.A. Please provide me with a little feedback, and let me know what you thought of it.
