The granny smith apple is a repeated image throughout Stranger Than Fiction, symbolising Harold’s rigorously structured life and his mortality. For most of the film, as a part of his meticulous daily routine, Harold eats an apple. This acts as a reminder to the audience that his strict schedule remains in his life. Consequently, at the end of the film when he doesn’t eat his daily apple, it symbolises that he no longer lives according to his intense daily schedule, but has begun to live a more relaxed, carefree life. Furthermore, when Karen walks out onto the street, some apples fall from their stand and one tumbles onto the road. Karen suddenly works out how she is going to kill Harold Crick in her novel. In a close-up shot of the apple, …show more content…
The apple is a symbol, foreshadowing how Harold is going to die. Earlier in the film, when Harold walks out onto the street, similar to an apple in a roasted pig’s mouth, he places a “granny smith apple between his teeth”, foreshadowing his coming death. In the scene when Harold has decided to face his death, Harold picks up an apple and walks out of his house while still holding it. During this scene, slow-tempo, piano music plays in the background. While the music is sad, it is also happy and peaceful to some extent, suggesting that while the situation is quite gloomy, it is somewhat heart-warming too, as Harold’s worldview has changed and despite his imminent death, he has also been reborn with a new attitude of selflessness and freedom. Symbolising his old life, the apple acts as his reassurance. When the little boy falls onto the road, Harold throws the apple on the ground before rushing to save him. As he lets go of the apple, it symbolises how he is knowingly letting go of his old life for a bigger cause. The audience watches the half-eaten apple as it silently rolls down the street, discarded and …show more content…
Harold’s watch is a central part of his life as it times and maintains his uptight lifestyle. The opening scene is a close-up of his watch, beeping and glowing on the bedside table. The narrator also says, “this is a story about a man named Harold Crick... and his wristwatch.” The viewer immediately becomes aware of the importance of Harold's wristwatch and is forewarned of its significance in the story and in his life. Furthermore, the lack of sound and music in this scene, other than the beeping from his wristwatch, highlights that this is the most important object in the room, as well as in his life. The watch is featured in many more close-ups throughout the film, including when Harold ties his tie, counts his brush strokes, picks out an apple and runs for the bus, timing how long it takes him. This illustrates how Harold’s life revolves entirely around strict routine and time. The special effects of numbers and calculations displayed as he goes about his day also reinforces his heavy reliance on time and numbers. The watch is also symbol for Harold, as all significant events in his life are connected to his watch. For example, when the watch goes out of time, his whole life also spirals out of his control. Harold only meets Anna for the first time outside of his job because of his watch, which made him miss the first bus and have to take her bus
In the story A Raisin in the Sun Lena Younger cares for a small house plant. This plant represents dreams. Mama has dreams for her family to rise from poverty and live in a better and bigger place, and also for them to continue to grow together as a family.
The turning point of the movie is when Harold starts to believe his inability to manipulate his own fate. That is after Harold stays home to control the plot of Karen’s novel and sees his apartment being unexpectedly destroyed. If we recall back to the movie, on his day off, Harold is watching a science program about how animals are unable to control their deaths in the natural world on TV. A memorable quote in the show “The wounded bird knows its fate. Its desperate attempts to escape only underscore the hopelessness of its plight,” describes Harold’s helplessness. Minutes after the quote is stated, Harold sees a crane crashes into his living room wall with his own eyes. The next day, Harold reveals these facts to Professor Hilbert, and Hilbert reinforces the idea that Harold needs to accept his fate. He suggest...
The juice of the pomegranates above falling onto the unicorns white coat also has different meaning. The seeds of the fruit represent the unity of the Church and hope for the Resurrection. It also is used to represent royalty and the many seeds represent fertility and the children to be produced by marriage.
the arrival of the insurance money. Her husband, Walter, has plans to use it to
One important symbol present in the story is Arnold's orange car. I think that it is meant to resemble Cinderella's pumpkin carriage. In Cinderella's fairytale the carriage is what liberates Cinderella from her unhappy family life to the ball where she meets her prince charming, falls in love him, becomes a princess, and in the end lives happily ever after. In this story, rather than whisking Connie away to happiness Arnold is most likely going to take her happiness and her innocence away from her once she agrees to get in the car. It is an old car that has been made to look newer than it really is. And on some level, the car also helps Connie to realize how important her family is to her. Although Connie might see it differently her family life really isn't so bad. She is a somewhat self-centered girl who thinks of herself as better than her mother and sister and attributes their familial problems to them being jealous of her. She doesn't seem to care much about them throughout the story until Arnold comes in his carriage to take her away from it all. Then she realizes how much she cares about them and even agrees to go with him just to keep her family safe from Arnold, who has shown her that he knows exactly what her family is like and even what they are doing in that precise moment.
The two characters Tom Reagan from Miller’s Crossing and Jack Diamond from Legs shares similar traits and characteristics. They both had an item that they carried or wore that showed what was going on in the character’s mind. It could tell what was on their mind, but also what was about to happen. There were times the outcome of events was determined, because the item was near the characters, and their minds.
a shard of metal from [Harold's] watch obstructed the artery keeping the blood loss low enough to keep [him] alive” (Stranger than Fiction). Through this example, Forster emphasized the symbolism behind the wristwatch, and connected it to the idea that small things can be responsible for transforming fate. A third symbol from the film was the cookie. The batch of cookies that Ms. Pascal had baked for Harold after an agonizingly tedious day epitomized his revelation that something had been missing from his life. As he astonishedly verbalized, “That's a really, really good cookie,” (Stranger than Fiction) it is evident that Harold was not expecting something as insignificant as a cookie to possess such a titillating impact on his senses. Using this example, Marc Forster placed into juxtaposition Harold’s experience with homemade cookies and his outlook on life, specifically forecasting that he would realize that his previously dull, exiguous life would ameliorate once he started to try new things and appreciate the small things that make life worth
They way Harold considers whether or not to help the bikers is another example of how cautious he is. "If he drew them to safety, they would return to what they had been" (p.305). Here, Harold chooses not to take the risk of saving the two men only to have them turn on him. Being followed by those bikers appeared to represent how Harold is getting punished for how he could not save his wife when she needed him, but as the story comes to an end, he realizes that it is not punishment, but rather an opportunity to have revenge for how he was bullied at a young age and could not fight those bullies back.
I chose him because his character extensively shows evolution in resentment towards his son and wife, is always inclined to situate his children in competitive circumstances, and is always willing to put his whole family on line in exchange for a gold medal. These traits were interesting to witness, and an analysis will help me understand his character. The despise everyone feels towards Harold is intentional to a high degree. His character was portrayed as an abusive father who (potentially) abuses his wife physically, and is shown to be mistreating her mentally, to the point where she attempts suicide. His relationship with his son Tony is also very unstable and misleading, as we see in the beginning of the film Harold grabs his two sons to fight each other right after Harold Jr. (eldest child) pulls down the fallboard of the piano onto Tony’s fingers. As the firstborn is evidently winning at beating the other up, both Harold Snr. And Jr. name-call him “sissy”, “fairy” and “poofta.” This scene gives Harold a reputation of being substandard father who just wants to beat up his kids, and conceivably misleads the audience. As the movie progresses, we see his drinking habits being introduced and enlarging as he re-lives memories and deals with his own expectations of
The grandchild “proudly” shows the grandmother the picture hoping to change the negative aura surrounding them. “With crayons the child draws a rigid house and a winding pathway.” (924) As already stated, “house” represents the grandmother. The winding pathway shows a new path opening up in her life. A look into who may be behind this emotional roller coaster is now featured. “Then the child puts in a man with buttons like tears…” (924) Tears to the child have an entirely different meaning than to the grandmother. The grandchild sees happiness in tears, showing that you can find something positive in anything that seems to be upsetting. The man symbolizes the loss the grandmother is feeling. The grandchild drew this picture to cheer up the grandmother. It is at the end of the pome do we find out what tears mean to the grandmother. The grandmother does not acknowledge the drawing and tries to hide her true feelings. While she is doing this, “secretly…the little moons fall down like tears from between the pages of the almanac into the flower bed the child carefully placed in the front of the house.” (924) The grandmother is coming to the realization that dwelling on the past brings will not make her loss return. Regardless of how much of an impact this loss had on her, pain is part of the grieving process. Only though pain
Throughout the novel this motif of the pear tree is used to symbolize the perfect male relationship that Janie longs to have. This may seem like a sexual fulfillment, but she wants to be fully loved by a man in both a sexually and adoring way. Hurston does an excellent job in describing how it would feel like to have such an intimate relationship by using the bee and blossoms. Janie's search is like a young tree growing and blossoming until she finds her true self.
... His parents engaged him in conversations that promoted reasoning and negotiation and they showed interest in his daily life. Harold’s mother joked around with the children, simply asking them questions about television, but never engaged them in conversations that drew them out. She wasn’t aware of Harold’s education habits and was oblivious to him dropping grades because of his missing assignments. Instead of telling one of the children to seek help for a bullying problem, she told them to simply beat up the child that was bothering them until they stopped.
... The final symbolism is the dead children. The dead children are shown in many ways throughout the play. For example, when the witches throw into the cauldron a finger of a birth strangled babe. This shows the evilness of parents for their children that would kill their babies.
Just like Crick, we are constantly reminded, from time to time, of the watch, just as if we were going on the journey with Crick – constantly reminded of the passage of time. The first scene where the viewer is first introduced to Cricks daily routine,
The character is quite a small figure in front of a vast background informing the audience that he is not a key character in the film as he is isolated by the mise-en-scene, his costume is a conductor's costume and is similar to that of Harold Zidler's, a character introduced later in the sequence. The first few seconds include an intertextual reference when the sound we first hear is the song The Sound of Music playing loudly and boldly. This song connotes joy and is quite celebratory, as if celebrating the joy of love and happiness, it signifies themes running throughout the film such as the idealism of love and how wonderful it supposedly is. The song informs the audience that this film will be about love, although it does... ... middle of paper ... ...