Summary Of Richard Condon's The Manchurian Candidate

The suspenseful thriller, The Manchurian Candidate, was directed by John Frankenheimer, and written by George Axelrod. The movie is based on a 1959 novel written by Richard Condon. It was released in 1962 but was pulled after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, only to be re-released in 1987 and remade in 2004. The Manchurian Candidate is a movie about a government conspiracy mainly involving a former Korean Prisoner Of War, Sergeant Raymond Shaw, played by Laurence Harvey who was thought to have been brainwashed by the Communists to be an assassin. A battle to find out exactly what is going on is fought by another former Prisoner Of War, Captain Ben Marco, played by Frank Sinatra.

What is the definition of the word rhetoric? One may be led to believe that rhetoric is merely a persuasive tactic used by corrupt lawyers and crooked politicians. However, the proper definition of rhetoric is, “the art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing, especially the use of figures of speech and other compositional techniques.” A simpler definition of rhetoric would be any communication that can be used to change one’s views on a subject. Lynda Barry successfully uses persuasive tactics in her essay “The Sanctuary of School” to engage with her readers who can empathize with finding stability at school as well as those who may not, such as lawmakers, school officials, and the guardians of the children.

On the surface, the movie The Manchurian Candidate presents a parallel universe inspired by the paranoid right-wing illusions of people who believed in the Red Scare. The film itself crosses over into several different dramas: war film, political satire, paranoid science fiction, black comedy, suspenseful intrigue, and horror. The notion that the Russian and Chinese Communists were working together to take over the U.S. by infiltrating them was a common idea. Because of the communist brainwashing when captured, Raymond Shaw’s lack of agency allows him to be controlled by outside influences in order to infiltrate the United States. The paranoia and fear of losing control to the communists during the Red Scare is paralleled in the film to a fear of the power that women had over men. The relationship that Raymond Shaw has with the women in his life is in complete opposition of the “normal” relationships men had with women during the Cold War. This opposition is analogous throughout the entire movie, especially in the dream sequence and in relation to Eleanor Shaw. Distorted representations of both men and women, which are not of the customary gender roles during this time, contribute to the formation of a pubic spectacle.

Rhetoric seems like a big word but the meaning is simple- persuasion. In the book Julius Caesar, Antony and Brutus, two major characters, are fantastic at persuading the Roman citizens. When one is reading the story, they might think that both have equal amounts but when you look closer, Antony has the better rhetoric strategies. In just a few short sentences, Antony convinced the people to believe that Caesar needed revenge even though he never came out and told them that. Just a couple of minutes ago, the citizens were on Brutus’s side and thought that Caesar needed to go.

In an effort to capture the effects of paranoia of the Red Scare in 1950s America, The Manchurian Candidate is filmed with the intentional techniques of character-following shots, plays on lighting, and mise-en-scene. These film techniques are utilized to make the argument that paranoia can be used to control others with the use of force as one tries to make sense of the chaos around themselves. Throughout the film, audiences fall into a sort of confusion when trying to determine the characters on the side of good or evil. Just as the audience gets trapped in the confusion of the film, the American people fell into pandemonium during the Cold War and were forced upon by the government to be on the side of freedom and democracy or be forced

Rhetoric gives you an avenue to tell a story from your perspective in a way that connects with the intended audience without having to be one hundred percent substantiated. This writing style is evident in almost everything we read from billboards to Internet ads and even political speeches.

Rhetoric is something that at least everyone uses in his or her everyday life. Rhetoric can be used in the form of social media, politics and even making the decision on how you are going to communicate. In the Youtube video titled In Defense of Rhetoric: No Longer Just for Liars, Professor, Dr. Ann George states rhetoric as how we persuade each other or how we make arguments. George believes we can do this by the words we use, the gestures we make and the facial appeals that can break down the language and encourage the argument one might be making.

I have learned that rhetoric is something I use regularly in my daily life. Unknowingly, I have been using this art of persuasion for even the most everyday things. Now that I can identify rhetoric, I see it everywhere in the form of politics, media, advertising, parental rearing, public speaking, personal, and even at our work place.

I have been taught rhetoric countless times in highschool and in college, and I simultaneously believe I know everything and nothing about rhetoric. I believe rhetoric is a form of art that is vital to human communication. Rhetoric, at least from what I can gauge, is any tool used in order to move an audience. Humans use rhetoric in various forms depending on the situation. There are a multitude of factors one must consider in order to most effectively present their ideas to an audience, and in order to do so they must use the proper rhetoric.

Before starting this class, I never understood what rhetoric was or how it affected me in my everyday life. Over the past week, I have started to grasp the concept of exactly what is rhetoric and I have made my own definition for it. To me rhetoric is the act of persuading a person or a group of people in something or to do something. When I first thought about rhetoric I immediately began to think about politicians and the upcoming elections. Politicians use rhetoric all the time especially when they are out doing campaign rallies in hopes of trying to gain votes. They have to use rhetoric in order to persuade voters to believe in them and want them as their senator, congressman, mayor, and etc. Besides politicians and political world, I could not think of other ways rhetoric affected me in my life at all until I began to think about people in the workplace.

Rhetoric taught in schools, aids children to make proper choices to their advantage intellectually. Rhetoric is in everyday life. Every move made comes with a choice of doing or not doing. The choice of doing or not doing is a form of argument within oneself. This form of argument is crucial for flow in life. Heinrichs talks about his experiment on argument with self. (Heinrichs) His experiment illustrated that one can not make choices without argument and pursasiveness. Students should be taught rhetoric in order to make proper choices.

In Rhetoric, Aristotle states, “Let rhetoric be [defined as] an ability, in each [particular case], to see the available means of persuasion” (Kennedy, 2007, p. 37). Aristotle is saying that rhetoric is not just the art of persuasion through speech. He was saying that rhetoric is the art of discovering the methods of persuasion available in all situations. This relates to the goal of many figures in the current day political climate. This goal is to discover methods of persuading as many people as possible as often as possible. A politician’s use or rhetoric can be compared to Aristotle’s study of rhetoric in that both utilize the artistic proofs and practice the three species of rhetoric. Aristotle’s definition of rhetoric closely matches the goals of modern politicians, and so rhetoric has become ingrained into our modern day political process.

America is known as the land of the free. Does being given illegal drugs without your knowledge by your own government sound like freedom? What about being treated with dangerous electroshock therapy for a minor mental ailment? Although these sound like plots from a terrifying science fiction novel, it is what the CIA experimented with from 1953-1964. As the fear surrounding threats of Communism and the Cold War intensified, American citizens and the government looked for steadfast ways to ensure the safety of the country. The CIA launched a highly secretive mission called MKULTRA in order to help achieve its goal. All over the Communist world, speculations were being made about “brainwashing” (Louis). The CIA felt

The Manchurian Candidate, Johnathan Demme directed the remake. Both films portray paranoia, mind control, and conspiracy. Frankenheimer utilizes satire, humor, and symbolism to convey the themes, whereas, Demme uses modern fears, camera angles and focus, and mental illness to achieve similar results.

Despite having vastly different plotlines, characters, & settings, the stories of Animal Farm and Manchurian Candidate have strikingly similar parallels when it comes to the basis of theme. Animal Farm is a simpler, almost light-hearted take on a communistic society, told through the perspective of farm animals who rebelled and overtook the farm; these animals represent those involved in the Russian revolution, as well as the rise of communism. Manchurian Candidate has a story that is a bit more rough on the perception of communism; it’s a story of a man who is struggling with corruption and brainwashing to further a communistic agenda. While both of these stories seem to have only a few ideals in common, they both share a common central theme