Morality in the film “Saving Private Ryan”

Introducción en Español:
Aunque muchos no lo podrán creer, la semana pasada vi por primera vez en mi vida, la película “Salvar al Soldado Ryan”. El siguiente ensayo debate algunos de los dilemas éticos presentados en la película, desde diferentes puntos de vista y/o filosofías.

Introduction in English:
Believe it or not, I watched the movie "Saving Private Ryan" for the first time, just few days ago. The following is a discussion of some of the ethical issues presented in the film, from different moral perspectives.
Having to write this essay and attending a talk given last week at Washington & Lee University by NPR Correspondent Jackie Northam has got me thinking about writing another article about Afghanistan and many of the US-War controversies. Stay tuned.

Quotes from "Great Traditions in Ethics" - Denise, White & Peterfreund.


Morality in the film “Saving Private Ryan”

Mrs. Ryan, an American mother whose four sons had been deployed to Europe during World War II, was about to receive several telegrams informing her of the death of three of her sons. When the news reached the Chief of Staff George C. Marshall, he decided to send out a team of eight men to rescue the fourth brother, Private Ryan. Marshall argued that rescuing him would be the only way to alleviate some of the grief of a mother and a family who had sacrificed everything for America. However, the mission entailed a rather high level of risk given that they had no information about his exact location and if he was still alive or not. As the story line develops, the members of the team die one by one in different circumstances, both before and after they found Private Ryan. The last scene of the film presents an aged Mr. Ryan, with a numerous family accompanying him to a military cemetery where he remembered the members of the team that rescued him. Even after so many decades, he wondered if he actually earned the chance of living his life while others lost theirs for him. Was the squad's mission the right thing to do?

From Kant's perspective on morality, the squad's mission was probably the right thing to do if we consider that America had a duty to lessen Ms. Ryan’s pain after all her sons had sacrificed themselves for their country. Moreover, the members of the squad performed a moral action by rescuing him due to the fact that they did not do it because they wanted to, rather because they felt it was their duty to obey orders in order to earn their right to go home.



Kant emphasizes the value of good will and/or intention, arguing that “a good will is good not because of what it performs or effects, […] but simply by virtue of the volition, that is, it is good in itself” (145). Thus, the fact that the rescuing team died would not affect the moral value of their action as a whole. Moreover, when arguing categorical imperatives, Kant is of the opinion that there are universal values and laws that we should take into consideration when judging the moral value of an action. In other words, there are actions that we perform because we either hope, wish and/or think that they should be performed by everyone for the common good. Thus, it could be argued that Marshall's decision to send the rescue team had a positive moral value given that ideally, we would not want to live in a scenario where government officials easily disregarded the feelings of a grieving mother and a patriotic family, such as Ms. Ryan's. Moreover, by rescuing Private Ryan, Marshall treated a soldier and his mother as ends in themselves, rather than means to an end. In other words, if he had treated all soldiers as mere means to winning the war, he would not have cared about Private Ryan or his family.

From Prof. John Rawl's perspective on the meaning of justice, the squad's mission was probably also the right thing to do for Ms. Ryan for three reasons. First, if all the members involved in the story were to be “impartial – that is, [...] operate under a Rawlsian 'veil of ignorance,'” it would be difficult to believe that any of the squad members would not like to be rescued if their mother had lost all her other sons (307). Second, even though Marshall's order privileged the life of Private Ryan over the lives of the members of the rescue team, from the Rawlsian perspective, it could be argued that this inequality should be allowed given that it benefits the least privileged, or in this case, the most grieving. Lastly, Rawl emphasized the concept of justice as a type of reciprocity based on the “mutual acknowledgment of principles by free and equal persons who have not authority over one another” (308). Thus, although most of the soldiers were not participating in the mission voluntarily, it could be argued that Private Ryan could have engaged in a similar rescue mission if it have been asked of him, for any other soldier. This possibility would be reflected by his reluctance to leave the bridge and his sense of responsibility towards his country.


The third and last perspective on moral dilemmas is John's Stuart Mill's concept of Utilitarianism, which mainly judges actions by the magnitude and value of their consequences. Mills argues that “actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness” (160). Moreover, Mills argues that pain and “pleasures vary in kind as well as in degree” (160). From this perspective, it is very difficult to draw a clear line between what could be consider wrong or right. First, it could be argued that saving Private Ryan did not only lessen the pain of a grieving mother, but contributed to the winning of the war by influencing the battle for the bridge into Paris. Regardless of the intentions and/or attitudes of Marshall and the squad, thousands of lives were saved by the rescuing team. Thus, in this case, more happiness was generated in the long term. On the other hand, it could be argued that all the relatives of the squad team would also suffer by the loss of their husbands, brothers and/or sons, rather than just having one grieving mother. Thus, generating in this case more grief in the short term. However, these are all hypothetical cases that deal with imaginary consequences that cannot be predicted or measured.


In my opinion, sending a group of men into an almost suicidal mission to rescue someone who might be most likely dead is not immoral, just very irresponsible. I cannot help keep thinking that, it is rather ironic that governments around the world often take actions that harm their citizens, like avoiding taking measures against environmental pollution, because they would suppose a great economic cost. While sacrificing both, civilian and military, human lives in wars are often considered mere collateral damages. When arguing all these different moral perspectives, I had to refrain myself from creating a graded scale to measure the value of one human life against eight other lives, due to the common taboo about putting a price on human life in general. However, it seems that in practical reality, these perspectives and the value they place on human life are rarely applied.

M.J. Soria