How we cite our quotes: All quotations are from Platoon.
Quote #7
BARNES: Now I got no fight with any man does what he's told. But when he don't, the machine breaks down. And when the machine breaks down, we break down. And I ain't gonna allow that, from any of you
Barnes describes the military chain of command very eloquently here. The platoon is like a "machine," and if guys don't follow orders and decide to do what they want, well the machine breaks and everybody dies. Successful warfare depends on the machine being well oiled, so to speak, which means doing whatever Barnes says.
Quote #8
KING: Somewhere out there is the beast and he hungry tonight.
What is the beast? The enemy? The jungle itself? The divisive spirit in the platoon that threatens to tear it apart? The answer is… all of the above. The beast refers to the entire spectrum of destructive things the men of the platoon face throughout the film.
Quote #9
TAYLOR: We didn't fight the enemy. We fought ourselves, and the enemy was in us. The war is over for me now, but it will always be there, the rest of my days.
There's a reason we don't see too many enemy troops in Platoon, and Taylor makes that reason clear at the end: the real enemies are the soldiers themselves ("ourselves"), the guys in the platoon who do more to hurt their fellow brothers than any NVA troop could ever do. The "enemy… in us" is the civil war Taylor talks about earlier in the film.