Imagination is Powerful in Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth

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Recommended: Portrayal of women in media disadvantage

Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth is not based on any literacy books. Clyde Geronimi’s, Wilfred Jackson’s, and Hamilton Luske’s Alice in Wonderland is based on Lewis Carroll’s original story of Alice in Wonderland. Neil Jordan’s The Company of Wolves is an adaptation of Angela Carter’s short story of the same name. All three female protagonists are evolving, physically and mentally, from girls to women. Imagination provides all three protagonists with freedom from oppression and abuse. In Pan’s Labyrinth, the main character, Ofelia is abused by her Fascist stepfather and utilizes her mind to escape his tortured. In Alice in Wonderland, the protagonist, Alice employs her imagination to free herself from societal norms. In The Company of Wolves, the heroine, Rosaleen liberates herself from her sister’s mistreatment. In Pan’s Labyrinth, Alice in Wonderland, and The Company of Wolves, the protagonists employ anger to produce a fantasy world that mirrors the injustice of the real world and provides them with control, but ultimately their bodies become susceptible to their minds.
The heroines invent a fantasy world that reflects the injustice they suffer in the real world. Mercedes, a housekeeper, utilizes Ofelia to cover her treason towards Captain Vidal. By means of affection, the housekeeper wins Ofelia’s trust and therefore prevents her from opening her mouth to the Captain. Ofelia encounters a Faun in the labyrinth and she becomes found of him. The Faun uses her to bring tranquility back to the underworld and ease the King’s pain of not having a daughter. In both worlds, other characters employ Ofelia as a tool to achieve their purposes. On the other hand, Alice is force by her society and her sister to behave properly. She pr...

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...trols the characters and the atmosphere through consciousness manipulation. At the end of the movie, Alice is about to be persecuted by the Queen of Hearts, when she sees herself through the door and tells herself to open her eyes. When she opens her eyes the characters and her agony vanishes. Alice is able to turn on and off her imaginative world similar to a human controlling an electronic device. Yet Rosaleen’s power is illustrated when she unleashes the wolf inside her. Throughout the story, she lived under her grandmother’s influence. When Rosaleen decides to disobey her grandmother, she surrenders her fear and gains control over her life. Although, she is in the main character of the story, that is not apparent until she transforms into a werewolf. By means of transformation, Rosaleen gains power over herself. The characters’ world contributes to their power.

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