Haroun And Pan's Labyrinth Comparative Essay

Naturally parents will want to see their children do well. Sometimes though in an effort to keep their children safe parents inadvertently hold their children back from exploring the world around them, lessening their chances to learn and progress. While it is understandable to want to shelter

This is a comment about the importance of freedom of choice; something which is completely compromised in a Fascist regime. Del Toro affirms ‘I thought it would be great to counterpoint an institutional lack of choice, which is fascism, with the chance to choose, which the girl takes in this movie.’ The scene in which Ofelia refuses to sacrifice her brother is particularly symbolic of her refusal to compromise her morality; in doing so she risks the wrath of the enigmatic faun and of Captain Vidal who is in pursuit of the baby. Moreover, she sacrifices her own desire to escape the brutality around her and realise her fantasy of becoming a princess. Michael J. Bayly maintains that ‘Ofelia’s disobedience of the faun’s demand…proves to be a deeply significant act of courage and integrity. Such acts are beyond the comprehension of her step-father and the world of fascist mythology he seeks to both build and embody.’ Del Toro states, ‘la desobediencia es totalmente lo contrario del fascismo’ and this act illustrates the stark contrast between the humanity and virtue demonstrated by Ofelia and the blind obedience of the fascists. Del Toro explains ‘Lo que me interesa del fascismo es justamente que es un hoyo negro de la voluntad. Es un sistema que no necesariamente es único, pero absuelve la

Throughout Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Salman Rushdie provides a fundamental, yet intricate variety of literary usage. These instances of literary usage provide and framework of support for the text which is to follow and to further accentuate the smaller and unnoticeable details of the story in to vital parts which are necessary for better comprehension and understanding of the meaning of the upcoming events. Symbolism is the most commonly used and most imperative literary device used by Rushdie. 'With the land of Chup, on the dark side of Kahani?This looks like the doing of the leader of the Chupwalas, the Cult master of Bezaban.'(H.S.S. Pg 75) This statement from the text has a very symbolic meaning behind it, both in terms of the

The director Guillero Del Torro uses many motifs and parallels in his film Pan's Labyrinth. The most obvious parallel in the film is the parallel between the real world and the fantasy world of the character Ofelia. Both worlds are filled with danger. At any second in both of these worlds your life could be lost. Del Torro separates the real world from the fantasy world with many visual motifs.

Pan’s Labyrinth, originally titled El laberinto del fauno, was published in 2006 by the Spanish director Guillermo del Toro. The story is set in the year 1944, in the country-side of a post-Civil War Spain. A young and imaginative girl named Ofelia, played by Ivana Baquero, travels with her pregnant mother, Carmen Vidal, who is very ill; in order to meet and live with her stepfather, a cruel and sadistic man named Capitan Vidal (Sergi Lopez). During the first night of their stay, Ofelia meets a fairy that leads her to a pit in the center of a labyrinth where they soon meet a faun (Doug Jones). The faun tells Ofelia that she is a princess from a faerie kingdom

The uses foreshadowing by Del Toro also plays in as a technique in depicting a predictive or predetermined conclusion for the protagonist and what is in store for her later on in the movie. In one scene when her mother is on the bed and the baby starts kicking she tells Ofelia to recite a fable to her unborn brother to calm him down, her story is about pain and loss and the reward in the end granted be eternal life. The fable she tells foreshadows the imagination she has for hardships she faces in reality and her conclusion

When you see Pan’s Labyrinth starring Ivana Baquero as Ofelia and Sergi Lopez as Captain Vidal, prepare to take your emotions for a ride. As the movie is a fantasy/drama film set in Spain of 1944, during the civil war. Yet, it still captivates its audiences with its selection of an unconventional fairytale. While, keeping some of the same elements such as a princess and fairies of a traditional fairytale. Not to mention the sudden dark twists and turns of a ruthless stepfather, heartbreaking losses, and the horrifying unseemly creatures which the legendary lost princess Ofelia must prevail. While, taking on an expedition to completing three dangerous tasks.

Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth tells the story of Ofelia who experiences magical encounters in this fantasy. One night, a fairy leads her into a hidden labyrinth where she meets a faun who tells her that she is a lost princess. He assigns her three dangerous tasks to prove herself and to claim immortality alongside her father. Meanwhile, her step-father, the captain of a merciless, violent army in fascist Spain attempts to stop a guerrilla uprising. Ofelia struggles to meet the demands of the faun before time runs out. Through this quest, she interacts with creatures and challenges that create a monstrous environment.

Throughout his life Rushdie has been writing controversial books. With his book The Satanic Verses he angered the Muslim community into declaring a fatwa or death sentence to him. The purpose of the fatwa was to silence Rushdie in order to take away his stories. When haroun is captured of the dark ship, Khattam-Shud explains his motives for poisoning the stories. He says, “The world however is not for fun, the world is for controlling” (161). This quote shows the attitude of the Muslim leaders who made the fatwa. They wanted to kill Rushdie for his stories because with his stories, the leaders of islam did not have

Nobel Prize winner Nadine Gordimer once stated, “Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever.” This was a problem faced by Salman Rushdie. After years of suffering from writers block, he overcame his obstacles and published "Haroun and the Sea of Stories". It is not only a story for his son, but a proclamation of the triumph of the writer over the oppressive forces that sought to silence him. When read literally, the resolution of "Haroun and the Sea of Stories" is the defeat of Khattam-Shud as dictator. However, Rushdie’s true resolution is the conquest of freedom of speech over oppression. This is seen in how the characters’

To further the point on the mill's lack of femininity, it is an indication to us audience that this is not right place for Ofelia. The box shape of it exists only for function, efficiency and work and there is no room to growth and discovery. That this place is not for a child reflects the fact fascism does not fit in Spain.

In Pan Labyrinth there is an amazing scene where a girl named Ofelia has to enter a dangerous labyrinth to find a special dagger. The scene is intense, with music, lighting, camera shots and foreshadowing helping to create a feeling of anxiousness. The viewer becomes nervous because there is a sense that something bad is going to happen. The viewer hopes that Ofelia will just follow the directions, find the dagger, and get out of there safely, but that does not happen.

As a further means of separating the population into distinct groups, religion acts as a divisionary force between characters and cultures. There are two primary conflicting cultures represented in the novel that are the cause of religious differences: Sunnis versus Shi’ites and secularism versus religious fundamentalism. Similar to the discrimination based on ethnicity, the conflict based on religion is primarily exemplified through Assef and Hassan, who are Sunni and Shi’ite, respectively. As such, any justification for inclusion and exclusion of people not based solely on ethnicity could just be rationalized through differences of religion. With this prevalent culture present, the importance is in the author’s depiction of the “bleak hypocrisies of the Taliban period--the disgusting cruelties performed in the name of righteousness” as stated by David Denby in “Hard Life.” Through the

In Salman Rushdie’s hands, political satire and caricature easily administer with fairy-tale fights of imagination that merge a fine diaphanous model of restrained allusions, impulse and humour. The magic realism popularized by Salman Rushdie inclined a large number of Indian novels. According to Anita Desai, Rushdie showed English language novelists in India a way to be “postcolonial”. There is an entire cohort of novelists who experience the weight of Rushdie’s influence as enabling their own talents. Quite apart from his distinctive characters, he showed Indians how the English language could

Rushdie uses opposites frequently throughout his book and one of them deals with the lands of Gup and Chup. In the novel, Haroun explains "Gup is bright and Chup is dark. Gup is warm and Chup is freezing cold. Gup is all chattering and noise, whereas Chup is silent as a shadow" (114). In the story, Gup represents the West where we value freedom of speech, whereas the land of Chup represents the East. Kattam-Shud, the dictator of Chup, wishes to poison the Sea of Stories in order to silence the stories forever because he believes "Inside every single story . . . there lies a world . . . that I cannot Rule" (151). His sign is a symbol of stitched lips which points to that he represents censorship unlike the Gups who value freedom of speech tremendously. However, the importance of free speech doesn't mean one should always speak, unthinkingly. Haroun observes that "Silence has its own grace and beauty (just as speech can be graceless and ugly) . . . Action could be as noble as Words" (115). Rushdie argues that a society must have a healthy balance of speech. Silence in itself is not a bad thing, but forced silence