The movie Life as a House shapes a touching story about how a father changes his teenage son’s degenerate life and deformed personality in his last 4 months of life. Besides, the father (George Monroe) has a dream to build a house with his son together during his last phrase of life. One of the most essential concepts in this movie is the characteristics for adolescences. Sam, George and his ex-wife Robin’s son, is influenced by his peer Josh and he does drugs, smoking, isolates from his family and always curse the people who concern about his personal life. By forcing Sam to spend a summer with him, George knows that it is the last chance to achieve his goal with his son and he does successfully well to make Sam changes dramatically and loves the whole family before he passes away. According to Erikson’s search for identity in the adolescences stage, they teenagers usually experiment with different beliefs, values and life goals. Sam’s life is just a waste until his father points it out. He believes that taking drugs and wearing make ups and being isolated from his family is the right life for him. He does not care how he live his life even he knows that it is degenerate. Sam wants to spend a summer with his peers instead of going to build house with his father.
Marcia‘s identity categories for adolescences is divided into four parts. Identity Moratorium is when delay making commitments about important questions. This category can be illustrated from the movie when Sam decides to live his degenerate life and does whatever he like to do and he does not care about his future. The second part of the category is Identity Foreclosure. These adolescents make a definite commitment, but the commitment is based on the suggestions of others rather than on their own choices. This can be also found from the movie when Sam is influenced by his peers and Josh wants him to sell drugs and so Sam tries but almost gets caught. Besides, he does drugs,