The Way We Were Analysis

Today in society there are many conflicting things in our personal lives, in the movie The Way We Were show great detail of that. The two main characters Hubbell and Katie come from different worlds. Katie, who is working class, Hubbell thinks that she pushes too much, whereas Hubbell came from a richer class where he doesn’t have to work as hard as Katie, making her think that he doesn’t push enough. They have different beliefs although that doesn’t stop them from dating each other at first, with Katie’s strong opinions on politics making their relationship complicated. They decide that love itself isn’t enough anymore to keep the relationship going. This gestures that people from different worlds always have different opinions which challenge each other and this can be difficult and bad in a relationship.

In the essay “Thoughts from the Tao-te Ching” by Lao-Tzu he writes that “The master does nothing, yet he leaves nothing undone. The ordinary man is always doing things yet many more are left to be done” (210). Hubbell is similar to Lao-Tzu’s master, for Katie thinks that he doesn’t work hard enough. Although Hubbell may not work hard enough according to Katie, he is able to sell his book. During the flashbacks to their college years, their professor read out Hubbell’s story Katie was upset that it wasn’t her story that the professor reads at the end of class she run to a trash can and rip apart her story that she thought that she did great on. She tells Hubbell that she really liked his story. Katie has worked hard her whole life only to get results like Hubbell, but he was not as involved in writing a squeal to his book or moving to Paris as Katie is. When they go to Hollywood and Katie is pregnant with their child Hubbell h...

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...wants to do. Hubbell always known that he wanted to work in Hollywood and that he did not need to convince anyone that it was a good decision. Although Katie was not as supportive of Hubbell career choices she ended up not as critical about Hubbell’s career choices.
People from two different worlds that have different opinions and always challenge one another can destroy a relationship. Katie and Hubbell came from different societies and they try to keep their relationship alive but their marriage ends. Katie pushes Hubbell do things that she thinks are best for him, whereas Hubbell thinks that she pushes too much with her politics and in her thinking that he is too good for Hollywood, and how he should go back to writing novels instead of screenplays. As the movie is ending, they meet again. Hubbell has a new girl, and Katie is married to someone more like her.