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The last lecture pathos ethos and logos
Ethos pathos logos in two texts essays
Ethos pathos logos in two texts essays
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As Ethan rides towards his brother’s homestead, he is greeted by awestruck stares. He rides with the brutal desert behind him, sun glaring at his eyes while his brother’s family is framed in shadow of their own home. A hopeful tune plays in the background as he approaches. In this opening scene of The Searchers John Ford establishes Ethan—played by none other than John Wayne—as the rugged individualist, the one who tames the wilderness. This cowboy is integral to the “Myth of the United States,” he is the one who tames the savage wilderness its residents (Durham). However as the film unfolds, Ford explores Ethan’s tortured psyche, his motivations, his neuroticism, even the Indians and their motivations in order to deconstruct deconstructing the myth in order to show that the cowboy is a relic of the Old West. In order to set up the myth, Ford must establish the primary antagonist: the Comanche. Our first encounter with the Comanche occurs at …show more content…
Ethan stands alone outside back against the sun. The beginning in the movie is reflected in the end. However one startling difference remains: he does not enter the house with the rest of his companions. Instead he goes outside staying the wilderness. Our cowboy knows he does not belong inside. He belongs where he can continue his borderline savage behavior. His family and friends fade into black as he stands outside while a folk song plays in the background. It is a bittersweet moment, as we have followed Ethan throughout his ordeal Ford has exposed his conflicted motivations, his borderline savagery. In this final shot, we can see that the cowboy is an antiquated concept that cannot exist as we move forward. Ethan knows this. His part in the “Myth of the United States” cannot be understated, however he cannot go on as a part of the myth. There is no longer wilderness to conquer, the enemy has been defeated, our hero has no purpose. He is rendered
...er and roam. In this vast land uninhabited between the United States and Mexico, John Grady encounter three men. “The man studied his eyes in the firelight” (McCarthy 281), looking for truth and honesty. This is who John Grady wanted to be. “Men of the country” (McCarthy 281). This was John Grady’s dream, his quest, laid out physically in front of him, but a struggle is created from the dream-like image of these men and the reality of becoming these men, although, John Grady has yet to reach this point. As the curtains close, John Grady rides off into the sunset, into vast plains, searching for the ideal qualities of a cowboy he will never find because of the unrealistic nature of his fantasy. For John Grady to live the dream, conflict between reality and fantasy leads to pain, suffering and darkens, forcing John Grady on a never-ending search for his fantasy.
In Sean Penn’s film Into the Wild the importance of understanding ones sense of identity is expressed through the character Christopher McCandless, the protagonist of the story. He vanishes from his mainstream life and ventures alone to the great Alaskan wilderness, we emphasis with him as he journeys for the search of freedom and happiness. Through representations of panning camera shots and verbal expressions throughout, the responder can easily relate to Chris’s revelations and views on society. He decides, “I need a new name” and graffiti’s “Alexander Supertramp, July 1990” on a public bathroom mirror in thick red lipstick when leaving his former life. The symbol of the mirror and extreme close up shot reflects Alex’s new identity, refocussing not only his reinvention of his name but also his freedom and a sense of self-discovery. Penn amplifies the diegetic sounds of crunching on snow, chipping of wood, or banging of a stick against the mattress, throughout the whole movie, creating a dramatic effect on the responder by exemplifying Chris’s senses and understanding of self disco...
Robert Altman created a film which Pauline Kael called "a beautiful pipe dream of a movie -- a fleeting, almost diaphanous vision of what frontier life might have been." The film certainly feels different from most Westerns, featuring the distinctively different music of Leonard Cohen and a washed-out style of cinematography which Altman claimed "was trying to get the feeling of antiquity, like the photographs of the time." The cinematography is starkly different from the vibrant colours of The Searchers (John Ford 1956) or Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks 1959...
To begin with, a man looks for a slave that knew the faces of the hidden outlaws. On their way they kill a sheriff to...
“Into the Wild” is a thought-provoking yet tragic film that depicts Sean Penn’s adaptation of the nonfiction novel by Jon Krakauer. The film portrays the gruesome fate of Christopher Johnson McCandless, a brave, charming, and troubled 22-year-old college graduate who set out into the natural world on a path of self-discovery and true happiness. In the beginning of the film Chris McCandless is introduced as a dreamer. His literary heroes included transcendentalists Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Jack London. The thinking behind McCandless’ rash decision stems from his anger with his parents for the lies and infidelities he witnessed as a child. Another contribution included his affinity for nature as it symbolized freedom and his desire to escape civilization. Following in the footsteps of his heroes, McCandless donated his $24,000 funding for law school to charity, gave away all of his material possessions, and left his family and friends with vague letters of his whereabouts. For 2 years, Chris adopted an alias as Alexander
While the named town of Starkfield is fictional, Ethan resides in a small town, common to rural areas of Massachusetts, not likely dissimilar to the town Wharton lived. Furthermore, Ethan’s distinctive dialect and verbiage utilized throughout the fiction account are reminiscent of the depicted area and era. After the failed suicide attempt, Ethan remarks, “‘Oh, Matt, I thought we’d fetched it,’ he moaned; and far off, up the hill, he heard the sorrel whinny, and thought: ‘I ought to be getting him his feed...” (Wharton 73). These literary elements substantiate the claim that Ethan Frome is distinctively
Ethan Frome showed himself to the reader as a outlandish, unconventional farmer with a strong sense of resentment. Ethan’s love triangle formed from a series of saddening events
McCarthy’s plot is built around a teenage boy, John Grady, who has great passion for a cowboy life. At the age of seventeen he begins to depict himself as a unique individual who is ambitious to fulfill his dream life – the life of free will, under the sun and starlit nights. Unfortunately, his ambition is at odds with the societal etiquettes. He initiates his adventurous life in his homeland when he futilely endeavors to seize his grandfather’s legacy - the ranch. John Grady fails to appreciate a naked truth that, society plays a big role in his life than he could have possibly imagined. His own mother is the first one to strive to dictate his life. “Anyway you’re sixteen years old, you can’t run the ranch…you are being ridiculers. You have to go to school” she said, wiping out any hopes of him owning the ranch (p.15). Undoubtedly Grady is being restrained to explore his dreams, as the world around him intuitively assumes that he ought to tag along the c...
Clearly, revealing the damage done by the capitalist ideology, whether individual or social, in the frontier society of 1868, or in the "separate but equal" context of 1956, was important to the director. Fortunately, Wood's theory, examining the new meaning created by the juxtaposition of the thesis of a preexistent text with the antithetical views of the auteur, reaffirms Ford's success, and the potence of the genre film. Works Cited Warshow, Robert. The. The "Movie Chronicle: The Westerner."
Trueman, C. (2013). The Battle of the Little Big Horn. Retrieved April 30, 2013, from History Learning
In “The Thematic Paradigm,” Robert Ray explains how there are two vastly different heroes: the outlaw hero and the official hero. The official hero has common values and traditional beliefs. The outlaw hero has a clear view of right and wrong but unlike the official hero, works above the law. Ray explains how the role of an outlaw hero has many traits. The morals of these heroes can be compared clearly. Films that contain official heroes and outlaw heroes are effective because they promise viewer’s strength, power, intelligence, and authority whether you are above the law or below it.
Because of the outlaw hero’s definitive elements, society more so identifies with this myth. Ray said, “…the scarcity of mature heroes in American...
In 1845, famous transcendentalist author Henry David Thoreau isolated himself from society and moved into a remote cabin near Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts. For two years Thoreau lived a simplistic life surrounded by all things natural and pure. Likewise, Christopher McCandless did almost the same thing as Thoreau and deserted his prior life to explore the world and experience it in its true beauty. Therefore, John Krakauer, author of Into the Wild, suggests that Christopher McCandless demonstrates the Romantic characteristic of individualism due to his decision to abandon his previous, prosperous life in order to "live off the land."
Future generations should be aware of the need for individuality. Diverse societies come not only through the mixture of races and cultures, but also through individual personalities. Without these, the world would be a bland place to live. As Juan Ramón Jiménez once said, “If they give you ruled paper, write the other way.”
The town Starkfield afflicts Ethan and helps to shape his destiny. Like the town, he is sullen and run-down. Starkfield sits alone in its valley, isolated from the world around it. Ethan is also isolated. He left the lonely valley to go to college, but since returning he has gone scarcely more than few miles from his remote farm. Physically, and therefore, emotionally, he is trapped by his wife, his farm, and his poverty. Ethan is in some ways, a piece of the scenery, or as the narrator says, "a part of the mute melancholy landscape, an incarnation of frozen woe."