In his classic film The Others, Alejandro Amenábar questions the nature of religion, life and death, and reality in a shockingly beautiful way. He handles symbolism masterfully, using classic motifs such as light and dark and haunted houses to get his point across further. Ignorant of their death at first, the children, who were in their lifetime allergic to light, avoided it at all costs. Light, often, is used as a symbol for truth: a guiding light for those who fumble about in the darkness. This is the same case in The Others. They fought to stay in the darkness and remain ignorant, but after discovering that they were dead all along, the light becomes good to them, even beautiful, and they welcome it. This obviously represents the truth
Lightness and darkness is a common theme throughout literature, most writers use it through symbols in their writing. In Poe’s story “Masque of the Red Death” and Hawthorne’s story “Minister’s Black Veil” both portray themes of lightness and darkness using symbolism throughout.
The title of the movie “signs” is significant because before you even watch the movie it implies there is some sort of foreshadowing. “What are the signs?” and “Where do they come from?” are question you can immediately ponder. Just from viewing the movie poster alone you can see what appears to be “Signs” from Extraterrestrials.
Only, the truth itself is dark. This is ironic symbolism. Often times, truth is associated with good, as is light. Meanwhile, darkness is associated with bad. Baldwin flips the symbols as to create verbal irony. The idea of revelations is continued through other symbols as well. Jazz holds different symbolic meanings to the narrator as opposed to Sonny. The narrator correlates jazz with the dark aspects of Sonny. He relates it to the cause of Sonny’s addiction. Sonny, on the other hand, correlates jazz with happiness as it is his light in the dark. Another symbol is found in the quote, “it glowed and shook above my brother’s head like the very cup of trembling”. The light holds religious undertones, evident with the allusion to Isaiah 51.17, 22-23. The religious aspect ties in to the idea that through both the dark and light, the characters find understanding; about each other as well as themselves. Religion is a way of attempting to find understanding in the universe, so it supports the development through understanding brought on by the light and the
In the beginning, there is very little light. It is almost dusk, and the speaker describes the smell as “dark” (7). Towards the middle and end there are various lights: lanterns, lamplight, fireflies, lamp (9, 11, 13, 20). This change over time depicts the storyteller’s significance to the speaker, because she brought enlightenment to his life. In this poem, light is a metaphor for knowledge, while darkness is a metaphor for ignorance. At the end, the old wise storyteller, who is the embodiment of wisdom, “was the lamplight” (20). In contrast, the two boys, who are young and ignorant, are “in one shadow” (21). The juxtaposition of light with darkness shows that the speaker and storyteller are opposites in their insight. Additionally, it is strange that she is a light before them, yet they are still shadowed. What is blocking the light from them? This metaphor illustrates that it takes time for people to become sage like their elders. As the speaker says, adulthood is “childhood’s aftermath,” which means that the knowledge people gain in childhood will lead them to be wise adults such as the storyteller
Light is used in the story to symbolize hope in a world full of despair and dark times. “We could not see our body nor feel it, and in that moment nothing existed save our two hands over a wire glowing in a black abyss” (Rand 60). Equality has discovered electrical light which was destroyed and hidden many years ago. The light also meant to symbolize Equality’s new found in a society where hope is outlawed leaving people sad and depressed with no knowledge of other emotion. A light in a world of “darkness” has
The film, Children of Men directed by Alfonso Cuarón, holds a mirror up to our faces and makes us look. Humans kill, torture, and destroy. Yet we create, give, and love. This motion picture explores the themes of hope, faith and redemption with astounding technical and artistic prowess that puts the audience into the thick of it. It is infused with authentic acting, celestial music, intense visual effects and rich symbolic script writing Children of Men is much more than a dystopian fantasy flick. It is an innovative masterpiece!
The house is where Carl and Ellie first met each other as kids, where they chose to spend the rest of their lives together and turned it into the home of their dreams. As the movie gets going Carl 's house symbolizes his connection with Ellie and how he is holding on to her memory by staying with the house, even if it’s inconvenient or unnecessary. Carl isolates himself from the rest of the world and his house seems a refuge from everyone and everything that want something from him.
She takes advantage of her passion for the darkness as a way of persuading her side of the argument, placing greater favor upon the peacefulness in darkness versus chaos in the light. Also her description of her emotions when she is surrounded by darkness suggests that our busy lives in the light have taken relaxation away from our lives; darkness helps us fall back into simpler times and serenity.
This connects to there being hope and fear in fearful situations because they hope that the night wont end and there facing genocide. Furthermore, another example of there being both fear and hope in fearful situations is on page 24 when it states, “Fire! I see the Fire! I see the fire”. This motif symbolizes fear.
The mood that Saki used in ‘The Interlopers’ was not one that was expected. A strip of forest was fought over by the Gradwitz family and the Znaeym family. Ulrich von Gradwitz grandfather won the famous law suit, which granted him this sought after piece of forest land. This brought three generations of rivalry among the families. Saki uses the significant relationship between Ulrich and Georg to teach the reader an important lesson. Life and human nature can be a funny thing, and Saki shows us that these things are so important for us to learn from. The symbol that ties everything in this story together is the trees in The Forest of Gradwitz.
the light is his way of saying he knows God is with him. In his reference of fate, he says
I pictured darkness that the men were in, fighting death. The more they fought, the more light shined, and eventually it was going to be fully lit and death would be gone.
What defines a “good” or “bad” person? The answer is complicated because we all have different perspectives on what we believe to be right and wrong. We as individuals have our own set of ethics by which we try to use when making decisions. However, when a person encounters a difficult dilemma, that choice can impact and even alter a person’s life. “Good People” by David Foster Wallace is an informative and insightful story of a young, unwed, Christian couple that are facing the conflicts of an unplanned pregnancy. Although outwardly this story seems to focus on “to abort” or “not to abort,” the underlying theme focuses on the internal conflicts the young man faces when weighing out the consequences of a decision. David Foster Wallace uses symbolism and an omniscient third person point of view in “Good People” to illustrate the internal battle one faces when dealing with the moral and religious dilemmas such as an unplanned pregnancy.
As a group, we selected The Other Guys, a comedy movie taking place in the New York City police department. The story involves two mismatched detectives that attempt to seize an opportunity in the department. In the movie, The Other Guys, the department is run by Captain Gene Mauch. The atmosphere in the department runs in a way that focuses on two main detectives doing most of the action outside the office. These two-star detectives are Danson and Highsmith, who are played by Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Samuel L. Jackson. However, a shootout with robbers results in the deaths of Danson and Highsmith, leaving a hole in the department. After mourning the death of the detectives, everyone in the office desires the opportunity to be the lead detectives of the department. The movie follows two of the detectives in the department as they attempt to fill the role of lead detectives. These characters are Allen Gamble, played by Will Ferrell, and Terry Hoitz, played by Mark Wahlberg. Both Allen and Terry have pasts that have been plagued by bad luck. Allen was once a pimp turned detective after being rushed to the hospital from poison ivy in his butt. Terry shot Derek Jeter during the Major League Baseball Playoffs. Even though Allen and Terry have been plagued by bad luck, they hope that making the arrest of all time would turn their life around.
In the novels Fahrenheit 451 and Anthem light is represented in the same regard. It has the same symbols too. They both represent light as a new positive beginning. Both authors uses light to reveal to the characters that there is a new way to live, a more blissful life is ahead. They write about light as a symbol of clarity and seeing what is out of the darkness.