Call Of The Wild Rhetorical Analysis

In the movie, the Jarretts lost their oldest son, Buck. This affected the younger son the most, Conrad. Buck’s death led him to suicide. He was put in the hospital, and this caused lots of conflict in the family. The mom is very inconsiderate because she never came to visit Conrad. However, the dad attempts to keep peace within the family. In the movie, there are many scenes where characters react to conflict by using ‘fight’ or ‘flight’ mode, also known as acts of silence or violence. Fight or flight is either avoiding the conflict, flight or fighting the conflict, fight. Good strategies for the Jarrett family to use during this tragic loss would be addressing emotional needs by mutual purpose, effective listening, and cognitive behavioral
Buck seemed to be his best friend and in a way, Conrad blamed himself for his death. There were multiple times when Conrad used fight mode throughout the movie. Though, a major time he did fight was the scene when the Jarrett family was putting up the Christmas tree. They were all being civil and enjoying their time together, then all of a sudden, Beth starts interrogating Conrad about quitting the swim team. Conrad then immediately fights back in the form of attacking. He starts questioning her love for him and is wondering why she cares about this. Conrad debatably attacks his mother, and he makes a valid point while doing so. He states that Beth should not care that he quit the swim team if she did not care enough about his suicide. This portrays Conrad attacking his mother because he is attempting to ‘win’ the fight by making his mother feel bad. He keeps comparing his mother’s love for Buck to her love for him. He then yells, “if Buck were in the hospital you would have visited him”. A strategy Conrad could have used in this situation is Mutual purpose, because instead of losing his temper towards his mother, he should have taken a moment to think how what he was going to say could affect himself and his mother
The character is the father, Calvin. He fights Beth in the scene where he questions her concern for what he wore to the funeral. His aggressiveness surfaces through his stern words and the attack form of fight. How he could have approached the situation is by being open-minded and letting her explain herself. This would be using the strategy of effective listening, given that listening is a large portion of communication. This portion was lacking in the conversation when he did not allow Beth to explain herself. In conclusion, The Jarrett family had many occurrences of conflict throughout the movie. They all had been through a lot and may have had different ways of expressing their grief. This is the perfect example of why they should have used the strategies mentioned rather than handling the conflict through fight or