Madness is ever present in Apocalypse Now. For example, the very first scene is a napalm montage set to The Doors. The main character is also introduced in a scene where he shows classic PTSD symptoms, expresses his desire to go fight again, and then drunkenly destroys his room. Each time someone or some place is introduced, Coppola shows us a different type of wartime insanity.
As Willard and his crew go farther north towards Cambodia, the madness increases. Chain of command devolves, and the soldiers the crew meet do increasingly erratic and crazy things. The Air Cavs blow up a village so they can surf (during combat), a USO show is torn to pieces by American soldiers, and the soldiers of the last outpost in Vietnam build the same bridge every day, just so they can report that the road is open. The insanity culminates with Kurtz's corpse castle and his bizarre followers (photo journalist in particular).
These extreme examples of madness reveal the psychological strain, and sometimes changes that soldiers go through during war. Lance is a good example of someone succumbing to the mental burden of Vietnam.
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