Underlying Themes In Spirited Away

Spirited Away has a lot of underlying themes that talk about problems in the world. Though the movie focuses on a girl who gets stuck in the spirit world and is forced to work to keep her life after disturbing the busy work at a bathhouse, which caters to the aching and tired Japanese spirits. The themes of Spirited Away speak about problems that are way bigger than they seem to be. It touches on the topics of environmental pollution and how we fail to treat the earth the way it needs to be treated, how greedy we are and how we fail to notice what makes us greedy, and how identity and how the power of names is way bigger for us as a people, than it seems to be. The first big theme I would like to address, that is featured in Spirited Away
Greed is shown throughout the film in a few different scenes, but is mainly shown in two scenes. The first scene is at the start of the film, when Sen’s parent’s discover a whole load of delicious looking food. The parents find a appetizing scent as they start to explore what seems to be an abandoned amusement park. As the follow the smell, they reach a restaurant which is serving heaps of hot food. Since the parent’s are hungry, the decide to sit down and grab plates and start eating and when their daughter, Sen asks them about if they’re stealing, they state that they’ll pay when their done, assuming that the owners. Then Sen runs off and when she comes back to collect her parents, they have become plump, full grown pigs. Because her parents were greedy and they took what wasn’t theirs, they were turned into pigs. Another moment, or a series of scenes that reflect the theme of greed is when No Face is in the bathhouse. Once the river spirit had come and gone and left all of his junk and gold behind, No Face was able to collect a tom of it and when he started to give it to the bathhouse workers, they started to treat him like a god. Both sets of characters become greedy. The workers wanted to treat no face nice and impress him, hoping he would give them plenty of gold, while No Face was taking advantage of their will to serve him well and began to demand things. These two sets of actions show what happens when people get greedy and start to take advantage of things. Greed brings out the worst in people and it is well shown throughout the plot of Spirited Away. While most people do not see greed everyday trait, it is there and it’s bigger than it seems to