Graham Hess In The Film Signs

Testing along with questioning.
In the film “Signs”, the main character, Graham Hess is left as a single parent. He is overloaded with many tragedies and hard decisions which makes him test his own beliefs along with his faith and trust in god. Living in the Hess household, there is two children, Morgan and Bo along with their Uncle Merrill and father Graham. Although the family lives in a rural area, they are outside of civilization because they live on their farm. With the family living on a farm, the kids depend on their father to entertain them and show interest in them, but Graham is having a hard time being a parent to his children because of the death of his wife, Collen. This along with many other reasons is why Graham has quit his
dedication to faith and is questioning god’s trust.
The characters of this movie play a big role in the emotional connections shown throughout each scene.
The main character is Graham Hess, a once former priest. He is the father and care giver for his kids but right now he is not mentally there for them. Graham recently lost his wife Collen. She was walking in the night when a driver fell asleep at the wheel and hit her. She unfortunately did not make it through the accident. With this tragedy taking a toll on Graham’s life, it is making him also question his beliefs. The two children are Morgan, the oldest son and Bo, the youngest daughter. Morgan’s character plays the role as the “adult” throughout this film. Morgan has bad asthma which leads to many difficulties he has to overcome in his life. He knows that his father is having a hard time coping with the loss of his mother so he then takes on the responsibilities that a father would have. Bo, on the other hand is a young girl that is not afraid of much and has shown her cleverness since the day she was born. Lastly, there is Uncle Merrill. He once was a professional baseball player that had hit the farthest ball in the minor leagues. When he knew his brother needed someone, he came to live with the family for
support.
There are many conflicts that arise in this film. The main one is Graham questioning his brief’s in god himself. With Graham once being the man that everyone came to with their problems, he now had his own problems that he needed to solve. When Colleen died, graham lost all hope in humanity, he thought to himself “why me?’, “How could you take her from me?” This leads to him losing the trust he once had in god. The other key issue throughout the film is the invasion of the aliens. The whole town is on ease because of the “signs” that were left in the corn field which is making everyone scared for their lives.
When talking about the invasion, each character plays its own role in the ending scene of the movie. It all started when graham went into the vet’s house to see what was going on but when he got inside, he was not alone. He was upstairs when he heard voices. This caused him to get a knife and that lead to the cutting of off an aliens fingers. Later on in the movie, that same alien stays behind and ends up in Grahams home. This is when the altercation arises and Merrill, Bo and Morgan play the lead roles. Each one of them uses something of their own to take down the alien. Morgan is trapped in the aliens arms but he is saved because he lungs are closed because he did not have his inhaler so when the alien breaths down his throat, nothing happens. Merrill uses his bat to knock the wind out of the alien which sends him to the ground. Then graham notices that water hurts this creature so he takes all the waters the Bo had left around the house and pours it on the alien which leads to its death.
To conclude, Graham, Morgan, Merrill and Bo realize that they can get through anything as long as they have each other. When faced with many hard decisions and scary things, they manage to make it out alive and safe. It may have just taken Graham time but he ends up regaining his faith. He understands that all the things that happened to him and his family were god testing him and his own beliefs. This ties in with the naming of this movie because graham was thrown “sign” after “sign”.