Norman's Mental Abilities In On Golden Pond

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On Golden Pond is a movie centering around an elder couple Norman and Ethel who go up to their summer cottage over the summer of Norman's 80th birthday. This story deals with a lot of different issues including aging, love, and family dynamics in a very beautiful, and simple way allowing the audience to really relate the story because of its universal issues. Though there is so much to cover I will mainly be focusing Norman's mental abilities and Norman and Ethel’s relationship with Billy Ray. How Norman’s mental abilities are treated throughout the movie is very real and impactful. Making the choice to not diagnose him at any point throughout the movie, but instead just give hints of how his brain is deteriorating caused the audience to relate and sympathize with him more instead of just blaming everything he did on an illness. Also from my experience most of time people do not realize there love ones have dementia …show more content…

Another instance of this lack in mental functioning that was more extreme was when him and Billy are in the boat and there's all the dangerous rocks and Norman doesn’t see them as dangerous. He ends up getting through off the boat, and though he was okay he could have been seriously injured. There are many other smaller moments when this occurs that are not harmful, like when he calls Billy by his daughter's name, Chelsea, when they're out on the boat. Norman also has some of the risk factors the article talked about. He is older, 80 years old to be exact,

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