Told almost entirely from a young, naive German boy’s point of view, Mark Herman’s The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is a hard-hitting Holocaust tale that will render audiences speechless. After arriving home, Bruno (Asa Butterfield) learns that his family will have to move because his father (David Thewlis) achieved a promotion in the Nazi army. Bruno noticed what he believed to be farmers living just past a stretch of woods near their new home. One day, not long after being told not to go near the “farmers,” Bruno leaves his home and heads towards the camp. There he meets Shmuel (Jack Scanlon), a young Jewish boy. While trying to understand what is happening in the world around them, the boys become friends. While…
felt lost in a world where they had already been left out and left behind.…
The three terms/concepts are: casting, ensemble acting, and method acting. The cast of American Beauty won a Screen Actors Guild Award for an Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Theatrical Motion Picture in the year 2000, the ensemble acting includes the acting techniques of working together in the film shots, and the casting of the group of actors for the characters’ roles includes: Annette Bening, Wes Bentley, Thora Birch, Chris Cooper, Peter Gallagher, Allison Janney, Kevin Spacey, and Mena Suvari. In fact, some of the actors cast in the roles are not method actors per se, and their acting articulates some of the Stanislavski's System techniques which include the establishment of their own creative personal methods.…
John Boyne uses narrative voice and a variety of other literary devices to convey the main ideas of prejudice and discrimination, power of friendship and innocence in his novel “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (BITSP)”. Boyne’s novel portrays the story of a young German boy in Nazi Germany who befriends a Jewish child residing in the Auschwitz Concentration Camp. The author explores prejudice and discrimination, power of friendship and ideas of innocence in his novel. Boyne uses third person limited narrative, dramatic irony, juxtaposition, setting and symbolism to convey these ideas in his novel. Boyne’s novel uses these techniques to create these ideas, giving us an insight into the experiences of the Jewish people during Nazi Germany.…
Elijah Lovejoy was the son of a Congregational minister. After graduating from Waterville College, he moved to St. Louis, Missouri where he started a school before attending the Princeton Theological Seminary.…
John Franks once said, “Hope, as it pertains to love, is a good thing because by hoping for certain things such as an extended future with the one you love is made possible.” In the movie “Life Is Beautiful," Guido is an Italian Jew who is married to a gentile named Dora. He protected his son during the war by making him believe that they playing a game while in the concentration camp. He did this to keep the harsh reality unknown to his son, Giosue. The book Maus’ main character is Vladek, a Polish Jew who went through ghettos and concentration camp while doing his best to protect his wife, Anja, and their son, Richeu. He strived to give his family the best that he can get since the persecutions are overwhelming everyone. Both stories are warfare related, and…
In the play Boy by Diana Son the artists were trying to express how truly freeing and gratifying it is to find oneself, regardless of the gender roles and stereotypes placed by society. Throughout the play you see how the artists, especially the lead actress who played the boy (Kelsey Richards) use various scenarios to accomplish their goals of what it means to be you and not a gender. The artists try to convey to you that not only is it okay to be independent, but the importance of it and hopefully in turn leave you with an imprint however small or lasting. Nonetheless, the effectiveness of the artists in accomplishing their purpose was achieved, but it was done in a very inconsistent and confusing manner, leaving the play to be lacking and not fully satisfying.…
A main characteristic and cause of immaturity is the overuse and dependence on imagination. This is displayed in children but also in Toby Wolff’s memoir This Boy’s Life. Toby frequently uses his imagination as both an escape and a shield from the harsh reality of his own current status. As a child, Toby would utilize his creativity to picture himself living a successful lifestyle instead of the poverty he was raised in. Even as he grew older, Toby would never be able to see himself anyway other than the identity he created for himself. Because Toby uses his creativity to re-invent a persona for himself in whatever way that pleases him, he does not ever truly consider the further consequences of his actions, contributing to his lack of foresight…
Coming to a new country was never easy for the Jewish immigrants and Italian immigrants'. They experienced the positives and negatives coming to America. The movie, “Hester Street” and short stories, “Did God Make Bedbugs” and “Choosing Dream” all show how the Jewish immigrants and Italian immigrants’ experiences were in America and in their country.…
“Beauty and the Beast” is a classic fairy tale that has been retold through various media such as oral storytelling, written short story, opera, film and musical theatre. With each rendition the story is given a new perspective and a focus on different elements for the reader/audience to consider. In 1946 Jean Cocteau adapted Madame Leprince de Beaumont’s written short story of “Beauty and the Beast” for the film, Beauty and the Beast, starring Jean Marais and Josette Day. Each of these versions offers their own unique approach to the tale and have become classics in their own right. De Beaumont’s story was written so as to have it read and enjoyed by adults and children, whereas Cocteau’s film is aimed primarily at…
“Letter to My Son,” written by Ta-Nehisi Coates in 2015, was in all essentiality advice. The article begins with the author describing his own sadness at the distance between a country built on a dream, and the sobering reality he saw. He continues on to talk about how his body, his son’s body, and the bodies of many of their peers around them, are very often going to be at the mercy of people around them. Coates then speaks of escaping the danger of having his own body at the mercy of another, and his desire to rescue himself through “a clash with the streets.” Cue a change of tone in the letter as it moves on to speak of the author’s “Mecca”. Which in this case means a holy city, or a place of light and perfection. For Coates, this place…
The film American Beauty was a complex story of a “traditional American family” as seen by the media. The intriguing part of the film was that it showed what happens behind the doors of a “typical American family” or a family that put on a persona of a typical family. The Family Crucible written family psychiatrist Augustus Y. Napier, PhD, with Carl Whitaker, M.D. it tells a story of an American family who initially seeks counseling because of the abnormal and rebellious behavior of their adolescent daughter. The family in the book seeks family therapy only after individual therapy for the adolescent daughter seemed to fail in solving the behavioral issues the family was dealing with from the adolescent daughter. Many aspects of family dynamics were drawn to the surface both in the film about the Burnham family and the book about the Brice family. The three family dynamics or principles that were common and most pertinent to both families were triangulation, scapegoating, and lack of communication due to stress. Both the film, American Beauty and the book, The Family Crucible will demonstrate all three of these principles multiple times throughout their unique stories.…
In my opinion, Boys Don’t Cry is one of the best movies I have even seen. It has a revelatory story with excellent performance. My viewpoints have been refreshed due to this movie. Before I took this Multicultural study class, the same-sex love has never happened around my life or detected by me, which leads me to deem that it is absolutely wrong because my church which tends to be more traditional expresses same opinion as well. After I took this class, I realized the LGBTQA is a vulnerable group, which is still suffering unequal treatment. But only after watching this movie, I feel so sympathy for their experience that I start supporting them to fight for equal rights.…
The concerns of the colonial period portrayed through the works of the different writers deal with their religion and their health. In To My Dear Children, Anne Bradstreet writes about both of these issues for her children to read about when she is dead (452). She mentions her relationship with God, not only telling her children about her beliefs with in Christianity, but also her questions (Bradstreet 453-455). Bradstreet wanted her children to be able to take from her experiences and benefit from them to better their own lives. She wrote this piece knowing she was ill, she ends by telling her children she was sick and weak (Bradstreet 455). By her ending, I think she knew her time on earth was coming to an end.…
About a boy is about Marcus, the twelve-years old boy, and a 36-year old boy called will. Marcus had recently moved from Cambridge to London with his mom, Fiona. Both Marcus and his mother, Fiona are watching the same TV-series, same music and also wear weird clothes. Marcus is getting bullied at his new school because he is different from all other pupils around. And maybe one of the worst actions he does in the book is that he starts, without warning, singing a song loud in the classroom. Actually, Marcus was not appropriate for school.…