Rites of Passage - Analyze Stand by Me Essay

Throughout the film, many stories are told by different characters that are involved in the story. There are

The movie, “Stand by Me,” exhibits the many things a child goes through during the adolescence. The theories of Jean Piaget, Lawrence Kohlberg, and Erik Erikson are clearly exemplified in Gordy, Chris, Teddy, and Vern throughout the movie. The four kids are identical to one stage each of Jean Piaget’s stages of cognitive development, Lawrence Kohlberg’s stages of moral development, and Erik Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development. By the end of the movie, you see a character change in Gordy and Chris

In Conrad Philip Kottak’s “Rite of Passage” he mentions the three stages of a rite of passage. Anthropologist Arnold Van Gennep defines these stages as Separation, Margin, and Aggregation. Victor Turner, another anthropologist, focused on Margin, which he referred to as liminality. Not only can a rite of passage be an individual experience, but it can also be a communal experience which Turner called “communitas.” Many of us experience this “communitas” in different ways such as my Hispanic culture that experiences quinceneras. Quinceneras are a rite of passage for young girls’ transition from adolescence to womanhood. I for one never experienced this rite of passage.

In her article “I Stand Here Writing”, Nancy Sommers examines the writing process and formulating ideas for writing in a more empirical manner. She states that before she found her creative zeal/ niche her writing was often undisciplined, unmethodical, and sloppy. Sommers reveals that in college she was less known for her writing and more for her long hair and misapplication of phrases. She found her true inspiration while writing her Senior Thesis on Emerson’s “Eloquence.” Throughout the entire essay, Sommers provides the reader with advice about writing. A key point that she mentions is, “If I could teach my students about writing it would be to see themselves as sources, as places from which ideas originate, to see themselves as Emerson’s transparent eyeball, all that they have read and experienced-the-dictionaries of their lives circulating through them.”

• Are the characters influenced by their setting? How might they behave if they were in a different setting?

Intro: The film ‘Stand by Me’, produced in 1986 by director Rob Reiner, set in the town of Castle rock in 1959 demonstrates how a group of four young boys undertake an incredible and self-discovering journey, which in turn, allows them to uncover untouched things about themselves.

These two characters showed significant psychological work in hopes of changing their “problematic” social identity. Both of these characters were conscious of the stigmas that surrounded their identities, each, however, had distinct ways in which they dealt with those stigmas and changing their meanings as they grew older. Many would say that the way in which they were able to transform their identities meant either embracing it or denying one’s own identity fully as the film progressed and new societal pressures arose.

This scene is significant to illustrate how both characters are formed by their social constructs while wanting different intentions.

These scenes are stitched together in a way that is meant to bring nuance to the story, but instead was hard to interpret and confusing. It was sometimes hard to know which characters were being referred to and where each stood chronologically with relation to the others. For example, two of the plot lines had characters with the same surname. In this case, it would have been helpful for the separate groups to have been further differentiated and identified. For these reasons, I believe that if the author was trying to convey some sort of complex plot, she did not succeed in this

Originally developed by anthropologist Arnold van Gennep in the early 20th century in his book Rites de Passage, the term liminality refers to the concept in which participants are in the threshold stage of disorientation and suspension from the previous social norm that they were used to. When an individual goes through a rite of passage—also coined by van Gennep—he is cut off from his “old life” and is born again into a new person. However, before he can fully become a new person and finish his rite of passage, he is suspended in a liminal stage that bridges the old self with the newly acknowledged self. In other words, he is in a stage of disorientation and amorphous identity. Found throughout all

The film Stand by Me, directed by Rob Reiner is about four best friends Gordie Lachance, Chris Chambers, Teddy Duchamp and Vern Tessio who go for an adventure over a labour holiday in search to find a missing body. Through their journey, they discover their true identity. Reiner explored many themes throughout the movie but friendship was the most important theme in the film. It is shown through each of the four boys, and how they have grown closer throughout their journey in the film. The story Sticks and Stones and Such-like, edited by Alice Pung is about an Indian boy called Sunil Salami who migrates to Australia. He didn't like his name as it was different to others in his school and got regularly teased. His family played a big role of

The four main dramatic elements that were clearly highlighted throughout the performance were tension, role, mood and symbol. An example of heightened tension would be when Jake Ryan had just had a fight with his father, and when his father was asleep Jake stood beside his bed and whispered “I hate you”. This created tension because earlier on in the play Jake told Emily that if you were to tell someone you hate them you had to say it not yell it because otherwise it had no meaning. However this example was not the only heightened tension scene from the production. The scenes that Jake shares with his father gives the teens in the audience who have experienced divorce something to relate

     The first and most obvious change in behavior is shown by comparing Henry?s actions when they stopped at the place with the willows during the road trip

Phoenix Jackson lived back in the country past the pines. She lived a lifetime of hardship. Her role in society is an old black woman in a white world, though she is not ashamed of her inferior position. She has walked a path periodically to get medicine for her chronically ill grandson who drank lye. On a cold December day, she shares one of her journeys to the hospital in Eudora Welty's "A Worn Path." This specific journey is examined closely of an old woman full of dedication, dignity and high morale.

The Stand by Stephen King was a very detailed, and engulfing story about a possible end to mankind. This “extermination” is caused by a man-made variation of the flu that is 100% fatal and spread through the air. It wipes out 99% of the world’s population in a month, leaving around 1 million people in the entire United States. The story is about how the population is split between good and evil and the battle that goes on between the two colonies. The story is presented from many different point of views, because there are around ten to fifteen different main characters.