M. Night's Unbreakable: Symbolism In Film

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Sebastian Giraldo ENC 1102 Prof. Hyde 5 December 2014 Symbolism within Unbreakable Symbolism is important in film because it is used as a physical representation of another idea or object. The definition of a symbol is something that represents something else by association, resemblance, or convention, especially a material object used to represent something invisible. For example, a lion symbol is used to represent courage and strength while the color red is used to represent love, violence, anger, and seduction. In M. Night Shyamalan’s film Unbreakable (2000) he uses three symbols to represent, weakness, good vs. evil, and fragility. M. night uses water as a sign of weakness for David just like Kryptonite is to Superman, color is also …show more content…

Night Shyamalan uses in this film is water. This is an incidental symbol which simply means a thing or action that would ordinarily have no deeper meaning but has one in a particular story. In this particular film, Shyamalan uses water as a sign of weakness for the main superhero character David who seems to be immune to getting sick or hurt except for when he is exposed to water. It is not that David is vulnerable to water, it is simply that he is subject to drowning like any normal person. If David were to drink water too fast he would choke on it and if he was to be submerged in water he would drown. When David was a child he had an incidental drowning which made him phobic to water. Davids dense bone structure makes him a poor swimmer. The director used water a symbol of weakness for David because every traditional superhero has a weakness so he wanted to emphasize that into his character to make it more realistic. In one scene David tells Elijah the story of him almost drowning showing him that he can get hurt. Elijah tells him that every super hero has a weakness (Shyamalan). Davids kryptonite is water. Like, water from the icy roads and water from the pool. Towards the end of the film, David fell into a pool and almost drowned after the man in the orange jumpsuit pushed him off a balcony only to be rescued by the two girls he had saved earlier

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