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The Good Son Character Analysis

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In the movie The Good Son, director Joseph Ruben highlights an array of psychological issues within the lives of each of his characters. Throughout the movie, Ruben showcases the characters’ struggles and experiences with grief after losing a loved one. It quickly becomes evident how main characters Susan, Mark, and Henry handle situations in their lives and what things influence them to act the way they do. Due to different psychological dispositions, these characters display both extreme and sometimes inappropriate behaviors throughout the movie. The movie begins with the death of Mark’s mother. Just before she died, she told Mark she’d always be with him and at first he didn’t understand, but he took it to heart. Not even a …show more content…

Due to her loving nature and maternal ways, Mark believes that his Aunt Susan has become his mother. Because he believes this, he feels safe, and comfortable enough with her to tell her about Henry’s misbehavior. Unfortunately, Henry has everyone on his side including his mother, Susan, who doesn’t believe her nephew Mark. One day, after thinking long and hard about what Mark had told her, Susan decided to wonder out to Henry’s shed. Here she found her deceased child’s toy, when Henry enters the shed Susan asks him why he had it. Henry quickly snatches it and runs. Once settling down, and walking through the woods, Susan asks if Henry killed his brother Richard, after Henry admits, he fakes suicide causing his mother to go looking for his body over the cliff he supposedly jumped. Once Susan was at the edge of the cliff Henry pushes her off of it – she catches herself, but as Mark intercepted the fight, both boys ended up hanging over the cliff braced to Susan’s hands. Having to make a hard decision, she decided to save Mark, and not her own son. As you would imagine, there are a lot of psychological aspects in The Good Son. Throughout the entire film, you can see each main character start to struggle with individual issues. According to Kubler-Ross’s Stages of Death and Grief, Mark is still in the denial stage, the very first stage, which is expected at his age, especially when considering the short

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