Guillermo Del Toro the director of Pan’s Labyrinth and Neil Jordan the director of The Company of Wolves use the idea of imagination to escape reality. Pan’s Labyrinth and The Company of Wolves depict the heroines, Ofelia and Rosaleen using imagination to escape the real world’s despotism. Ofelia and Rosaleen are abused and utilized their abuser’s outrage and their own fury to invent a whimsical world that mirrors the oppression of their physical world and momentarily provides them with control. But, ultimately their minds become a source of enslavement for them.
In Pan’s Labyrinth, Ofelia’s anguish becomes beneficial for her when she constructs a realm of magical creatures. Ofelia is abused by her fascist step-father, Captain Vidal and has
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Even though this world represents freedom for the girls, they also encounter the same problems they were eluding. Mercedes, a house-keeper, uses Ofelia to cover her treason from Captain Vidal. By means of affection, the house-keeper wins Ofelia’s trust and admiration. Ofelia feels obligated to Mercedes and, because of the attention she has been given, she maintains her silence. Del Toro’s directs, “” (Pan’s Labyrinth). However in the magical realm the faun uses her to bring tranquility back to the underworld and the King’s agony of not having his daughter. In both worlds, other characters employed Ofelia as a tool to achieve their purposes. Although there is not a clear, illustrated scene in the beginning of The Company of Wolves, the movie implies that Rosaleen’s parents do not believe Rosaleen when she reports her sister Alice’s wicked behavior towards her. In Rosaleen’s fantasy world she encounters the same lack of trust as in the real world. Rosaleen’s mother does not believe the folktales Rosaleen shares with her. The mother thinks she is silly for believing in her grandmother’s tales. (The Company of Wolves). Similar to their lives, the girls’ fantasies produce the same trials for …show more content…
In the first task the faun assigns Ofelia, she has to retrieve the key from the belly of a giant toad. Ofelia gives three magic stones to the toad and instantaneously kills him. When Ofelia digs inside the insides of the toad, her actions reflect the pale man who devours the insides of children before he murders them to satisfy himself. In her second task, she sacrifices the fairies to eat some grapes. Like Captain Vidal who sacrifices his men to continue to be in power. In order for Ofelia to become a princess she has to die. Ofelia dehumanizes herself to achieve happiness. On the other hand, when Alice is eaten by the wolves, Rosaleen is delighted. In the film, the scenes transition from Alice’s agony to Rosaleen’s content over the death of her sister. During Alice’s funeral, Rosaleen is hardly affected by the death of her sister and paints herself as innocent. Jordan directs, “Why she did not save herself?” (The Company of Wolves). She ask the question, but in reality her sister’s welfare was far from her mind. Rosaleen’s happiness demonstrates a silent murderer. The girls embody their abusers and become the
The movie the Labyrinth tells a story about a group of unlikely heroes trying to make their way though a maze in order to defeat the Goblin King. The story starts out with the main character Sarah whom, without even realizing it, wishes her baby brother to be taken way by Jareth the Goblin King. He tells her that if she wants her brother back she will have to make her way through the labyrinth and to the castle beyond the Goblin City. She only has 13 hours to complete the seemingly impossible task or her little brother Toby will be turned into a goblin. While making her way through the twisted and endless maze Sarah runs into many weird characters. The first person she encounters is Hoggle a very untrustworthy dwarf whom is under the influence of Jareth. He is selfish and does things only if there is something for him to gain. He betrays Sarah many times throughout the movie, but in the end he proves himself to be more than a traitorous coward. Ludo is a yeti and despite looking vicious is a gentle and caring monster. Ludo also has the power to control rocks. Sir Didymis is a loudmouthed, but noble knight who displays his valor throughout the movie. The four heroes manage to fight their way through the perilous labyrinth. The Goblin King Jareth is defeated and Sarah’s brother Toby is saved. Though the characters in this movie seemed to be nothing more than ordinary, and if not odd, they fought their way through labyrinth and conquered an entire army of evil goblins and their king. (Labyrinth 1986)
Whether one would like to admit it or not, change is a difficult and not to mention uncomfortable experience which we all must endure at one point in our lives. A concept that everyone must understand is that change does not occur immediately, for it happens overtime. It is necessary for time to pass in order for a change to occur, be it days, weeks, months, or even years. The main character, who is also the narrator of “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves”, realizing that “things felt less foreign in the dark” (Russell 225), knows that she will be subject to change very soon. The author makes it evident to readers that the narrator is in a brand new environment as the story begins. This strange short story about girls raised by wolves being trained by nuns to be more human in character is a symbol for immigration, as the girls are forced to make major changes in their lives in order to fit in with their new environment and adapt to a new culture.
The girl's mother is associated with comfort and nurturing, embodied in a "honeyed edge of light." As she puts her daughter to bed, she doesn't shut the door, she "close[s] the door to." There are no harsh sounds, compared to the "buzz-saw whine" of the father, as the mother is portrayed in a gentle, positive figure in whom the girl finds solace. However, this "honeyed edge of li...
"Pan 's Labyrinth" is directed by Guillermo del Toro, is a magical realism drama. The screen shows the magical world of bizarre situations, a fictional out of Pluto 's daughter "Ophelia" to roam the world. To 1944 as the background, the fascist murder of guerrilla fighters as a real-world story. The whole film myth and reality are intertwined, is a complete metaphor and reflection on the Spanish civil war. One side is the little girl innocent fairy tale, while the Nazis are inhuman torture and slaughter. Two living scenes intertwined in a film, brings out a moral and human conflict. This is the child to see everything in the eyes, and what we see, it seems that the other world.
In the Film Pan’s Labyrinth, the main character Ofelia goes through a journey in her self created fantasy world that not only runs parallel to the hardships she faces in the real world at home with her new stepfather, Captain Vidal, but also is very metaphoric in relation to the resistance to fascism itself that was taking place in actuality in 1940’s Spain under the rule of Francisco Franco. Ofelia’s journey through the Labyrinth showcases the two main choice that come about when faced with overwhelming odds, just like members of fascist countries that tried to resist against the ruling powers. People living
Alice’s failure to understand the “native” culture, and her insistence on imposing her own norms and values ultimately culminates in a life-threatening situation.” (Binova “Underground Alice:” the politics of wonderland). Alice is the colonised in the situation with the Queen of Hearts. When she is introduced to the Queen her evil nature is revealed as she orders “Off with her head!” (Carroll 96). However, she is contrasted to Alice’s good nature while she shouts “Nonsense!” ( Carrol 96). The theme of chaos and confusion is brought forward as they play croquet all at once with noises all around and even in the court where everyone is expected to be civil. Although the Queen, as a character reinforces adulthood, subversion emerges again by Alice standing up for herself at this time. Nearing the end of her dream, she stands up against the Queen at court but it dream ends without a resolution. Maria Lassen-Seger says in ( “Subversion of Authority”: In “Alice’s Adventures of Wonderland”), “the relationship between the child and the adult is an impossible power relation in which the child is marginalised and considered powerless, thus, the adults suggest in their books what a child ought to be, what values and images it should accept.” The Queen at this point in the dream would have been the
This story speaks of a married woman who fell in love with a man who was not her husband. She bore this man a child and realized that she could not live without him. In the event, she decides to leave her husband to be with the child’s father. However, there is only one problem and that is that she has two other children by her husband. She has a daughter who is 9 years old and is very mature for her age, and a darling son who is 5 years old. As she leaves to restart her life again with this other man, the 5 year old son is left behind to stay with his dad, and the little girl is tragically killed by a pack of wolves. The little boy is devastated by his mom’s decision to leave him behind. He is constantly haunted by dreams and images that come to his mind surrounding his mother’s...
In “The Beast In The Cave”, H.P. Lovecraft develops a suspenseful plot in order to build tension throughout the story that inevitably leaves the reader feeling disturbed and the story hanging. The plot itself is seems simple, but is complicated at the same time. Victoria Nelson talks about how Lovecraft’s stories tease the reader “with the tantalizing prospect of utter loss of control, of possession or engulfment, while remaining at the same time safely contained within the girdle of a formalized, almost ritualized narrative”. With “The Beast In The Cave”, the protagonist faces only one conflict throughout the story making it a simple plot line; however, the predicament he is in provides the complexity and tension that Lovecraft creates in other stories as well.
In the essay: “ ‘Cinderella’: A Story of Sibling Rivalry and Oedipal Conflicts”’, Bruno Bettelheim discusses how Cinderella is a story about the difficulties of sibling rivalry and the degraded heroine ending up on top of the siblings that oppressed her. Bettelheim argues that sibling rivalry is created when a child feels that they cannot win their parents love and esteem in comparison to his brothers or sisters. In addition he argues that every child feels that they deserve to be degraded at some point in their life. The concept of Oedipal guilt, his last point, has some intriguing details included in it, concepts of which could be disputed. However, the main focus of this essay is on how children justify the idea that they should be degraded, and because of the hardships they have faced, risen up and exalted like Cinderella was. He states that Cinderella relates very closely to the youth because they feel like they can relate to her situation more than the majority of people could.
In the second epigraph in the short story “St. Lucy’s Home For Girls Raised By wolves’’ by Karen Russell discusses how it’s not easy going from a wolf to being a human. The girls must work hard and try their all to make it. They feel like they don’t belong there, it’s like going from a small school to a big school. They day dream of their old way of life. They feel uncomfortable and depressed.
Imprisoned in the “cardboard world” for a long time, Antoinette feels so lonely. “Long ago when I was a child and very lonely I tried to kiss her”(Rhys 180). She thinks of her childhood, and she does not remember many things. Undoubtedly, she becomes more abnormal. “One morning when I woke I ached all over. Not the cold, another sort of ache. I saw that my wrists were red and swollen”(181). Something bad has happened to the poor woman. “Grace said, ‘I suppose you’re going to tell me that you don’t remember anything about last night’”(181). Grace’s words imply that Antoinette often forget about something. A submissive wife is changed by her husband’s indifference-- she endures loneliness, coldness and despair.
The film tells the disconcerting story of a young girl who finds a magical realm. Ofelia was a young girl caught up in the fantasies of her fairy-tale books. The film, directed by Guillermo Del Toro, presents the reader with the journey that Ofelia took in attempting to complete the three tasks given to her by the faun, which she discovered when wandering through a labyrinth. Personally, I feel that Ofelia was using her creative imagination as a form of escapism: her mother was extremely ill and her new father was a sadistic and malevolent man, who takes pride in his status and the fact that he is the highest authority figure there. Del Toro's narrative is particularly disturbing since fairy-tales are incorporated into the story (such as when Ofelia is dressed up like Alice and finds herself drawn to a pagan Wonderland).
My thesis statement is that children’s innocence enables them to cope in difficult situations. Children generally have a tendency to lighten the mood in sad situations because of their innocent nature. They turn even the saddest situations to mild, innocent situations. This is evident when Marjane says “these stories had given me new ideas for games”, (Satrapi, 55). By saying this she refers to her uncle’s stories of how he and other prisoners were tortured in prison. Stories of torture have never been easy to hear even for adults but Marjane so innocentl...
...r extremely mournful and elegiacal attitudes towards Ophelia. She says, “sweet to the sweets” (V.I.254) as she scatters flowers upon her coffin. She knows what a sweetheart Ophelia is and empathize her. Ophelia’s association with flowers represents the once young and pure maiden that tragically dies due to the fatal-innocent trait she possesses.