Comparing Lester of American Beauty and Ricci of The Bicycle Thief
In American Beauty Kevin Spacey who plays Lester lives a typical middle class life
with his family. His wife is having an affair, his rebellious daughter doesn’t talk to him and his neighbors are psycho. In contrast The Bicycle Thief portrays a tight family. Riccis wife loves him, his behaved son talks to him and his neighbors are helpful when a crises occurs. In both of these films the main characters, Lester and Ricci, go through a responsibility stage. Both must make a life changing experience, either good or bad, that will have an effect on the people around them.
Lester decides to make a few changes in his rut of life, changes that are less
mid-life and more adolescence like. While he slowly goes through these changes on film
one can see that the more responsibility he gives up the more happy he becomes. What he
gives up to make him happy, though, only makes his family more hateful towards him. It
isn’t that he gave up his responsibilities to improve his relationship with his daughter or improve it with his wife but to be selfish and gratify himself from what he lost when he was young. He does reckless and foolish things in this movie, but he doesn’t deceive
himself, he knows he’s running wild--and chooses to. He let these feelings over power
him and he almost let this irresponsibility get the best of him when he found himself alone with his daughters best friend. It’s perfectly natural to have feelings like he has toward her but there came a time with him when he saw what he was going to do was not right. So he refrained and actually gained a friend. (After he has been losing people left and right) His ability to refrain from his action...
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...l up Ricci throughout his search encounters indifference to humanity
and incivility of others. Ricci fights within himself to be the better person but only ends up in internal conflict with himself. He loses his respect for himself and we are astonished by his indecency toward other people of Riccis same impoverished disposition. On the other hand American Beauty dabbles with the question how uncivil and inhuman can
someone lower themselves to over a short period of time. But Lester proves us wrong.
His obsession with Angela in the end turns into an act of humanism and civility towards
someone who is naive. Both of these main characters traits, at some point in everyone’s
life, have delivered or even taught a lesson about refraining from some sort of action that could end up in consequences that are defiant against ones own code of conduct or
someone else’s.
the entire story. He was trying to redeem himself as a good father and a
I also know that sometimes I need to give up my right of happiness for others. For example, there was a man on a boat along with other men. And there was a quarrel on the boat. As a result, everyone was given a place. So the man decided to dig a hole at his place, justifying that by saying that is his right and place. So if they allowed him, they all would be in danger. And if they prevented him, they would have denied his right .In this case, I personally think that man should give up his right for the sake of others. Of course, you may not agree or consider the right to dig a hole at that man’s place, but
Society pressure themselves to be happy; they often ask questions like, “does that make you happy?” What they fail to understand is that sometimes doing the right thing, for the moment, might not seem to bring happiness in one’s life, but after trekking the ups and downs of life, happiness might be waiting on the other side. From time to time people also judge good and bad through happiness. “If something is good, we feel good. If something is
	Antonio's new job can bring his family new hopes and happiness, which are drastically destroyed when his bicycle is stolen. The banal circumstances are brought to life when it is realized that a modest bicycle is such an important element in determining the future survival of the Ricci family. Human optimism is there, beginning with Antonio's excitement when he gets his bike from the pawn shop, and the next morning when the family joyfully interacts before setting out for work. These scenes contain the promises that a modest job can bring and the dignity and pride of being able to once more function within Italian society. T...
The protagonists in both American Beauty and Chocolat challenge social constraint and the need to conform, in order to achieve individual freedom. Lester Burnham is a middle aged man who has encountered his mid-life crisis and has lost sight of beauty in the world, but after meeting his Daughter, Jane’s, ‘best-friend’ Angela, Lester falls for her, which challenges social constraint, but at first, Lester only fantasises about her. The director, Sam Mendes, shows that it is a fantasy through recurring techniques through the different fantasies, such as the background becoming black, a spot light on Lester and Angela, rose petals and close ups on both characters. After Lester met his new neighbour’s son Ricky Fitts, he began to see himself in Ricky and remembered a time when he lived without care and “had my[his] whole life ahead of me[him]”. Lester begins to relive his teenage years where he “flipped burgers … party and got laid”, but then defies social constraints to chase after the teenage girl, Angela to hopefully rekindle his youth. Lester’s actions through the movie demonstrates the social constraints on middle aged men showing that one that follows social expectation “sell[s] our[their] souls and work for Satan”. Vianne Rocher in Chocolat, is depicted as working for Satan in Father Reynaud’s eyes, but compared to American Beauty where “work[ing] for Satan” is following the status quo of society but in Chocolat is the opposite where it would be rebellious and one would be an outsider for doing so in the strictly Christian town of Lansquenet. Vianne, as soon as she moved into Lansquenet, was noticed as the outcast as her daughter, Anouk, was illegitimate and they were offering temptation to the town through chocolate during the ...
that he recieves from his sons, and the way he alienates himself. All of these
Epicurus argues that the greatest secret to happiness is to be as independent of external things as possible. Being content with the simple things in life ensures that you will never be disappointed. He goes to the extent of saying that a person following these ideals ‘will leave as a god among men.’
“Self-concept consists of knowledge, views and evaluation of the self, ranging from miscellaneous facts of personal history to the identity that gives a sense of purpose and coherence to life” (McCrae and Costa, 1996). With self-concept, we learn who we are by observing ourselves and using our cognitive processes to judge and evaluate our behaviour. However, with self-regulation, we are able to use this knowledge and judgment and apply it to future situations and so predicts behaviour and says a lot about our personality. If we are willing to cognitively analyse past situations and apply it effectively to future situations, this means we are changing our behaviour, thus changing our
who achieve sense of meaning in their lives are happier than those who live from one pleasure to another.
Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle believed that happiness requires virtue; hence a person who wanted to be happy needed “virtuous amounts of character.” Socrates identifies happiness with pleasure and exp...
"Partly what we do as human beings is to take care of others and contribute to others. This makes life meaningful but it does not necessarily make us happy ”(Esfahani Smith). If the shoemaker choose the path that his father and grandfather even few more generations down, it could be that he chose that option to have a full meaning to his life, though with the high chance of having an unhappy life. He who chooses to continue his father’s destiny and one day passing it down to his children could even be unhappy or even choosing shoemaking as a carrier out of responsibility not happiness. A lot of people choose to do things in life that they does not necessarily like but do it anyone to sacrifice for their loved ones and surroundings. Although still, for many individuals there is no happiness without meaning no matter the suffering and the pain they face. Happiness is the struggle that people face throughout their
when individual needs are met. The man of consciousness can be happy, even if his
According to Noe (2012), most experts believe that the most important human resource decision makes by a leader is deciding who to hire. Manager manages the recruitment and selection process. Selection for the best candidates for the job is very important in an organization because the performance always depends on employees, the recruiting and hiring is costly and the legal obligations like mismanaging hiring has legal consequence. The main aim of employee selection is to achieve person-job fit which is identifying the knowledge, skills, abilities (KSAs), and competencies that are central to performing the job. The objective of effective selection is to decide who the right people are, by matching individual characteristics (ability, experience, and training) with the requirements of the job (DeRue & Morgeson, 2007; Kristof -Brown, Zimmermam, & Johnson, 2005). The manager will do checking for reliability and validity of the interviewer. In PPNJ Poultry & Meat Sdn Bhd, the people who manage the recruitment and selection process is the Human Resource department or staffs.
Recruitment refers to those activities that an organization tries to attract people for applying a job in the organization. From these activities, chances will be given for people to apply jobs from there organization. An effective recruitment should have a right person in the right place at the right time; the main way to attract applicants can be listed as follows, walk-ins, employee referrals, advertising, websites, professional associations, educational associations, professional agencies, E-recruitment and world-of-mouth. Applicants can get some recruit informations form different ways; employees will provide a job description for those who are interested.
” Rather, in some more mystical sense, contentment can be taken as an absolute innate state before any intellectual judgment about particular situations in life is attained. Life of little children are generally seen more satisfied and happy until their own intellectual powers or their ability to judge good from bad is truly acquired. Having said that later on they begin to develop a sense of less or more through loosing or gaining from their personal experience in life. Given the complex nature of a human being and the lack of self catharsis or a true system of self-actualization, the level of satisfaction attained through one 's full potential may vary due to a haphazard drive to fulfill the goals. A famous arab proverb dictates contentment as "The richest person is not the one who has the most, but the one who