MovieChat Forums > Full Metal Jacket (1987) Discussion > Why wasn't Leonard ("Gomer Pyle")...

Why wasn't Leonard ("Gomer Pyle")...

posted 9 years ago by hernanmachopaul
7 replies | jump to latest

discharged from the military as he was mentally unfit for service?

[–] ncdwbmk6 9 years ago

After the "blanket party", he improves his performance as a Marine recruit. Hartman himself seems satisfied with him. Why would he get kicked out at that point?

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Choocheechoo choocheechoo choocheechoo ya ya pow!

[–] hernanmachopaul 9 years ago

It's true that he improves as a soldier, but his already fragile mental condition worsens, and "Joker" notices this at one point.

[–] ncdwbmk6 9 years ago

From Hartman's point of view, Leonard was becoming a good Marine.

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Fowler's knots? Did you say ... fowler's knots?

[–] mikeyg24 9 years ago

Also Hartman calls him 'silly' and 'ignorant', there's no indication that Lawrence was considered as anything but a run of the mill dumbass. It's hard enough to get recognition for mental illness in modern times never mind a draftee that was more than likely expected to go to Vietnam alive and return dead.

24/04/1916

[–] SlickySlixta 8 years ago

Also Hartman calls him 'silly' and 'ignorant'

That's putting it very very mildly.

Don't put the devil in the picture, cause' the religious groups won't wanna see it.

[–] mr-murph 9 years ago

That's the irony.

[–] stevekaczynski 8 years ago

Leonard was just a statistic to be sent to Vietnam. All Hartman noticed was that he was shooting straight on the firing range and was improving as a Marine. Joker is his buddy and kind of intelligent but the Marine machine would just ignore Leonard's difficulty. Hartman in training actually presents Whitman and Oswald as paragons to be imitated, and Whitman was almost certainly insane. The whole point of boot camp is to turn them into killers and it is questionable how sane boot camp and the Vietnam war is. So for all these reasons Leonard's burgeoning insanity simply slips through the cracks.

"Chicken soup - with a *beep* straw."