Born on the Fourth of July

Autobiography by Ron Kovic, 1976

Film directed by Oliver Stone, 1989

Volunteering for service in the Marines in 1968, Ron Kovic was a naïve teen who survived the Vietnam War and American indifference to its veterans to become a renowned and controversial veterans’ activist. Kovic published Born on the Fourth of July, an account of his experiences, in 1976. When Oliver Stone brought Kovic's story to the screen in 1989, a wide range of Americans were made to reflect anew on the troubling fate of Vietnam vets returning home from a war that had bitterly divided U.S. society.

Responding to his country's call for personal sacrifice to stem the spread of communism—a call that had originated with Pres. John F. Kennedy in the early 1960s—Kovic volunteered for service in the Marines in 1968. Raised on heroic images of war shown in John Wayne movies and inspired by the respect and admiration of Americans for World War II vets, Kovic imagined that military service was the way to fulfill his childhood dreams of heroism and sacrifice.

As a Marine fighting in Vietnam, however, Kovic failed to become the hero he had envisioned. Instead, he accidentally shot a corporal from his unit and then sustained an injury that left him paralyzed below the chest. Realizing that war, particularly the war he was fighting, was not simply heroic, Kovic began to lose his belief in his country and the government that sent him to fight.

Having survived his injury, Kovic endured a second nightmare when he entered the Veterans Administration hospital system. There he witnessed and experienced the neglect of returned soldiers. His autobiography recounts his hospital time in graphic detail. Feeling deeply betrayed, Kovic expressed his disgust at being treated as less than human and recorded the daily indignities he and fellow paraplegics endured. Kovic also experienced America's ambivalence toward the war during his homecoming, as he met neighbors who displayed discomfort at his appearance rather than the adulation he had expected. Struggling to find a place for himself, Kovic traveled to Mexico to a veterans’ colony. After spending some time there, he returned to New York, where a broken leg forced him to return to the neglect of another VA hospital.

A veterans’ protest convinced Kovic to participate in the antiwar movement, and he joined Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Despite becoming a media star in the organization, betrayal by informants and his peers’ resentment of his celebrity status led to further disillusionment. In 1972, however, Kovic accompanied other vets to the Republican National Convention in Miami, where he was interviewed by TV newscaster Rodger Mudd. After disrupting Nixon's acceptance speech, Kovic was pushed from the convention floor and spat upon by a young Republican delegate.

Oliver Stone earned the Academy Award for Best Director for his film based on Kovic's life. Following the autobiography, Stone traces Kovic's journey from young idealist to fervent war protestor. Stone depicts Kovic (played by Tom Cruise) as an innocent, driven not by a sense of duty to Kennedy's ideals but by an overbearing mother. Drawing parallels to Kovic's deep Roman Catholic faith, Stone's film illustrates a journey of sacrifice, confession, and absolution. [Page 84]Kovic's accidental killing of the corporal is the most damning act of his life, and Stone's film features a fictional meeting with the corporal's family to provide forgiveness for the cinematic Kovic.

...