Essay on Myth in World Film Part 1

Summary of Oliver Twist

(Information obtained from http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/oliver/summary.html)

 

Oliver Twist is born in a workhouse in 1830s England. His mother, whose name no one knows, is found on the street and dies just after Oliver’s birth. Oliver spends the first nine years of his life in a badly run home for young orphans and then is transferred to a workhouse for adults. After the other boys bully Oliver into asking for more gruel at the end of a meal, Mr. Bumble, the parish beadle, offers five pounds to anyone who will take the boy away from the workhouse. Oliver narrowly escapes being apprenticed to a brutish chimney sweep and is eventually apprenticed to a local undertaker, Mr. Sowerberry. When the undertaker’s other apprentice, Noah Claypole, makes disparaging comments about Oliver’s mother, Oliver attacks him and incurs the Sowerberrys’ wrath. Desperate, Oliver runs away at dawn and travels toward London.

Ads by ZINC

Outside London, Oliver, starved and exhausted, meets Jack Dawkins, a boy his own age. Jack offers him shelter in the London house of his benefactor, Fagin. It turns out that Fagin is a career criminal who trains orphan boys to pick pockets for him. After a few days of training, Oliver is sent on a pickpocketing mission with two other boys. When he sees them swipe a handkerchief from an elderly gentleman, Oliver is horrified and runs off. He is caught but narrowly escapes being convicted of the theft. Mr. Brownlow, the man whose handkerchief was stolen, takes the feverish Oliver to his home and nurses him back to health. Mr. Brownlow is struck by Oliver’s resemblance to a portrait of a young woman that hangs in his house. Oliver thrives in Mr. Brownlow’s home, but two young adults in Fagin’s gang, Bill Sikes and his lover Nancy, capture Oliver and return him to Fagin.

Fagin sends Oliver to assist Sikes in a burglary. Oliver is shot by a servant of the house and, after Sikes escapes, is taken in by the women who live there, Mrs. Maylie and her beautiful adopted niece Rose. They grow fond of Oliver, and he spends an idyllic summer with them in the countryside. But Fagin and a mysterious man named Monks are set on recapturing Oliver. Meanwhile, it is revealed that Oliver’s mother left behind a gold locket when she died. Monks obtains and destroys that locket. When the Maylies come to London, Nancy meets secretly with Rose and informs her of Fagin’s designs, but a member of Fagin’s gang overhears the conversation. When word of Nancy’s disclosure reaches Sikes, he brutally murders Nancy and flees London. Pursued by his guilty conscience and an angry mob, he inadvertently hangs himself while trying to escape.
Mr. Brownlow, with whom the Maylies have reunited Oliver, confronts Monks and wrings the truth about Oliver’s parentage from him. It is revealed that Monks is Oliver’s half brother. Their father, Mr. Leeford, was unhappily married to a wealthy woman and had an affair with Oliver’s mother, Agnes Fleming. Monks has been pursuing Oliver all along in the hopes of ensuring that his half-brother is deprived of his share of the family inheritance. Mr. Brownlow forces Monks to sign over Oliver’s share to Oliver. Moreover, it is discovered that Rose is Agnes’s younger sister, hence Oliver’s aunt. Fagin is hung for his crimes. Finally, Mr. Brownlow adopts Oliver, and they and the Maylies retire to a blissful existence in the countryside.

Essay on Myth in World Film

     The 400 Blows and Oliver Twist

 

For my final movie analysis I wanted to compare the lives of Antoine from the 400 Blows and the title character of Oliver from Oliver Twist. I had a lot of difficulty coming up with a good idea but this one really clicked. I like that they both touch upon life from a child's perspective. But beyond that the stories focus on topics like the battle between the social classes, how corruption from adults ultimately ends up corrupting the youth, loss of freedom and feelings of entrapment, the loss of innocence, and abuse on both a physical and psychological level among many other things.

Question about the Film Water

The Film ended on a pretty ambiguous note whith Shakuntala placing Chuyia into Narayan's care and instructing him to give Chuyia over to Gandhi. My question is do you think that's really what happened and if so what kind of life do you think Chuyia would have lived given her background and the teachings of Gandhi.  

 



Interesting Use of Music  

For my choice of interesting music I chose a scene from a Mexican Telenovela (Soap Opera) that I used to watch when I was little. The title of the show is Amor Real (Real Love). The context is that this woman named Matilde just got married to this rich guy named Manuel to save her family from financial ruin but her boyfriend who has been missing for months came back looking for her and she wants to escape with him. Manuel finds out and let's just say it does not go well. I love it because it's really over the top and dramatic and the background music just intensifies that.



Cultural Perspective of Water

The use of water in the film "water" had lots of religious connotations. In literature the fact that water is used / mentioned symbolizes cleansing, life, and freedom but the type (body) of water is equally as important. In this film the main source is the Ganga River. This river has been important to the Hindu religion for millennia. It is seen as a living entity, a goddess. It is worshipped and highly regarded. Moreover, in general literary terms rivers represent the flow of life and fertility, constant movement, and the character following a distinct path. In the film water represented freedom and cleansing for the main character Kalyani when she decided to commit suicide by drowning herself in the river. By doing so she was able to free herself from her life of misery. In the Hindu culture it is customary to cremate the body in order to detach the soul from the body so it can properly reincarnate. Kalyani didn't have a chance to do this first of all because she could not afford it but I think it was symbolic of her cleaning her body from the dirtiness it accumulated from the way she was forced to use it, namely prostitution.