Alienation

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Recommended: The effect of romantic films on real life relationships

Love is one of the most liberating connections two people can hold between each other when it is authentic and sincere. Many find completion and satisfaction when they find this ideal, true love in another. However, when love is turned into a façade in order to create the image of an perfect, fulfilling relationship, it can be alienating and destructive. In Walker Percey’s essay, The Man on the Train, he claims that love is ultimately a source of alienation instead of an escape into wonderful satisfaction. This theory is exemplified in Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night, a story of a woman, Ellie, on a journey to fill her void of true love and escape her feelings of alienation. only exacerbates her sense of alienation instead of functioning as a cure. Until Ellie can find real love within herself she will never be fully satisfied with her life. In the mean time she involves herself in many different scenarios with various men seeking some form of love, her distraction from alienation.
The opening scene of “It Happened One Night” illustrates that Ellie has all the luxuries one can wish for, yet she is still dissatisfied with her life. She argues that although she is given everything she is still not happy. During an argument with Peter Ellie explains the reason for her alienation, “People who are spoiled are accustomed to having their own way. I never have. On the contrary. I've always been told what to do, and how to do it, and when, and with whom.” As a result she finds herself on a quest for her husband to be, King Westley, whom her father strongly disapproves of. In the course of her search she falls in love, yet again with Peter Warne. By the end of the movie Ellie and Peter seemingly live happily ever after.
The love that Elle pursues is a forged feeling. She shifts so easily from her adoration for King Westley to her love for Peter Warne that it leads one to believe that it is disingenuous. Throughout “It Happened One Night” Ellie is being taken care of by someone else other than herself. In the beginning her father looks after her. Then on her search for her husband, Peter takes Ellie under her wing. The men in her life all play a role of a nurturer or a protector, in a sense replacing the role of her father. Ellie is essentially in search of a man that can support and nurture her. The men that fulfill Ellie’s needs in...

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... (Percy 99). Furthermore “[Ellie] is taking refuge in the standard rotation of the soap opera, the acceptable rhythm of the Wellisian-Huxleyan-Nathanian romance of love among the ruins” (99). Although Ellie believes she is truly in love with Peter and plays a part in a great adventure of romance, she is just following a well-known path another has already taken. Percy continues to say that Ellie’s passion for Peter is “far from being a free exploration, it is in reality a conforming to the most ritualistic of gestures: that which is thought to be proper and fitting for a sexual adventure” (99).
Finally, Ellie’s pursuit for love does not prove to be an effective method to terminate alienation. Her love for Peter will only last as long as it can attain her attention, or until the next gentleman with a flair for adventure comes along. Ellie will continuously seek love from various people. Until Ellie tires from “excursions into the interesting” and begins a journey “into [her] own past in the search for [herself]” (95) will she find authentic deliverance from alienation. As a result love only plays a part as a distraction from her boredom, and plunges herself deeper into alienation.

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