I think Thursday had a death wish

Thursday has a thirst for Glory and Honour. I don't think death has anything to do with it. If Thursday lives and is victorious, he will be sent back to Washington the hero he still sees himself as. If he is not victorious, Thursday would rather be dead. Death is not his goal, but it is an easier out.
Thursday would rather be dead than face disgrace.


I'm a Luna-tic and more importantly a JESUS-tic.
It's the Bible, you get credit for trying!

Well he did have a death wish in the end. What Thursday wanted was to be famous and become prominent. He was ambitious and hated coming to Fort Apache because there was little opportunity for garnering support. Custer liked bugling his name out as well.

In the end he asks John Wayne for his sabre telling him that he'd make a fine CO someday...well that's the giveaway...he wanted to go out in blazes of glory and be a hero and he won didn't he? All the people who fought with him lost including that tragic guy Collingwood who was a hair's breath away from making it out alive.

'Course history finally caught up with Custer and I think the same would have happened to Thursday. You can't silence the truth forever.


How much is a good nights sleep worth?

Disagree completely...You need to watch again and open yor mind,

> I'm not informed at all on the history of Custer,

Well, first of all this is a fictional film and Thursday has a lot more to do with the contemporary problems of American society at the time the film was made than being about Custer (the choice of using Custer's last charge was more of a metaphor for many things, perhaps chiefly about the mediatized glorification of "heroism" in wars, a huge problem happening during WW II--and Ford knew only too well about it, himself making war propaganda for the Navy Signal Corps).

Thursday represents a more "modern" attitude to lead and control the military, a bureaucratic and superficial one, which menaces an arguably more "obsolete" but nevertheless more humane and realistic way to form and maintain a community of soldiers, and even for maintaining peace, with Ford's sympathy going obviously to the later.

As in many films by Ford, we see here the destruction of communal values of warmth and friendships, values that are not easily explained by simple words, nor to be easily measured by superficial disciplines of following army regulations. These precious values are so easily destroyed by what we normally call "the advance of civilization." Ford had already tackled on this theme in quite a few of his pre-war films, but after WW II, he became more and more critical about the contemporary American civilization, which he nevertheless sees its advancement as inevitable, and focused more and more on the destruction of communities, underlined more and more with deep sorrow and melancholy. Fort Apache is perhaps the first of the many films that would follow.

As Ford saw, the depth of the communal values (for him the fundament of the American democracy) would be taken over by more superficial ones which usually merely goes down to either being famous or making a lot of money, or having higher social positions--all selfishness, as opposed to the virtue of self-sacrifices that the men of Fort Apache shows at the end; they die for a war that they didn't agree to, that they were opposed to, but they nevertheless die willingly, immortalizing (though in secret, as only York and their wives would know) the values of friendship, of warmth, of the community.

>but I think Henry Fonda's character in this movie wanted to go out in a blaze of glory, as they say. His thirst for glory and fame I think explains his "heroic" behavior at the end of the battle. What do you guys think?

If Thursday had a death wish, as all death wishes are that must be unconscious, but I am sure you can interpret that way. Thursday from the very beginning of the film is a man deeply hurt who feels unjustly dishonored. He used to hold an important position at the War Department, even representing the Army in embassies in Europe (among the most honorable positions for an administrative officer), and all of a sudden he was appointed to the far-away post of commanding Fort Apache, which is for him literally being chased away to out of no where. That is disgraceful and humiliating.

The reason for that appointment is never precisely presented in the film, which makes it more truthful. Most probably the War Department found some reasons about Thursday to chase him away in Fort Apache, maybe his own mistake or failure, but a guy like Thursday would never admit that to himself. It is always the others to blame--typical male behavior, I must say...

So he wants to prove how capable and honorable an officer he is all the time. The methods he takes for that are definitely the wrong ones, and if he really understood the great tacticians in history that he learned about in military academy and in books (quite a few names he cites, saying that Cochise could not be as good as these great historic figures), or if he were not becoming that hysterically rigid, he could have a very different kind of life, enjoying what the life at Fort Apache can offer, gaining the confidence and friendship of his men, and really maintaining the peace for the country he serves. Most of all he wouldn't be that stupidly self-obsessed, making such a stupid insane decision.

But he, too obsessed in his social status and his "honor," is too blind for that, and on the other hand the values that are represented in this film by Collingwood, York, by the three stooges...no, sorry, the three funny sergeants, by O'roeke the father, and especially by the women of Fort Apache (they are marvelous. Though it is a western, this is probably the most female-oriented, if not feminist, film by Ford. They are the strength, they are the pillars of that community) cannot make the headlines of newspapers, and can represent only very little values in the contemporary society. These people would remain the "nobodies," however much virtue and genuine humanity they had, while even Thursday's horrible mistake can after all be disguised as "heroic."

The bottom line is, men often want to boast about how great they are, they want to prove how important they are, especially those who suffers with secret inferiority complexes. Thursday is a typical case.