Castaway Themes

Throughout this semester, we have covered a wide range of topics. And many of these themes are displayed through art in our modern society. In particular, they are demonstrated in movies. Topics like adapting to new environments and changes, the culture in early societies and more fundamental ideas like human interaction and communication. The first film that I thought brought up a lot of themes from the class was Castaway. The general premise of the movie that a man becomes stranded on a deserted island and must attempt to survive there. He comes to the island as a stressed business man that is more concerned with his job than with his family. However, once on the island, he must forget all other worries and has to fight to adapt to his
As early humans moved out of trees and onto the savanna, countless biological changes had to take place. Because they were no longer living in trees, they no longer needed arms that reached past their knees. And since they were walking and running, it was beneficial to have longer legs. Similar to Castaway, they changed because their environments no longer required certain characteristics but necessitated others. Early humans also developed new ways to hunt based on what they had available. Humans realized that they had much better endurance than their quicker and more agile prey. So in order to catch them, they would run after their prey for hours until they were able to catch up to the completely exhausted animal to easily kill it. Other early humans would carve rocks into sharp points to aid in their hunting. In Castaway, he took from these humans. To catch fish, he would throw his sharpened spear and impale his
This movie relates more directly to topics from class. Gladiator is set in 180 AD, at the peak of the Roman Empire. A major characteristic that separates us as humans is how we form communities and societies. A society is what builds culture. In this film we can see how the hierarchy of the ancient society worked. There was an emperor, a senate, a prince or princess, an emperors trusted officials, and an army general. This complex system creates countless issues within the government. During our class, we looked at societies like Cahokia and the Incas. Although Cahokia and the Roman Empire were clearly very different, they had a very similar outline to their society. In Cahokia they had one chief similar to that of the Romans with an emperor. They also had large areas for public gatherings, entertainment and a defined central city surrounded by what we might call the suburbs. Another important aspect of these more modern societies was the ability to specialize. When agricultural practices advance enough so that not everyone must farm for themselves, people can spend their time mastering other crafts and bettering the society as a whole. Long before these large modern societies came about, the job market was fairly slim in choices. There were the hunters-gatherers and ones that stayed back to protect the young. Without agriculture, finding and consuming food was the main objective of the group which