Analysis Of The Whale Rider

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A hero is someone who will attempt everything in their power to help others and risk everything they have to help others. In the movie, The Whale Rider, you can clearly see all the elements of The Hero’s Journey. A young girl named Paula Apirana, is living in a small village with her grandparents. Paika’s dad, who is living in Spain, returns to see Paula and proposes that she should come live with him. She declines the offer and decided to stay with her grandparents. Paula then secretly tries to learn the important ritual, that only males are allowed to learn. Her grandpa, Paka, gets extremely angry at her until he realizes that she is the “chosen one” to perform the ritual. Paika goes through many difficult challenges, however she manages …show more content…

This hurt Paika because she was working incredibly hard to try to impress Paka, however in reality he didn’t bother to give her any attention. There’s this part in the movie where Paika finds a whale wash up on the shore and tries to wake up the Whale by telling the Whale to get up and to start swimming again. Eventually the Whale does get up and Paika starts to ride the Whale in the ocean. Everyone in the village comes out to see her do this and are all amazed. Grandpa then sees this and thinks to himself all the things that Paika has done, for example, she managed to find the Whale tooth that Paka threw in the ocean when the other boys couldn’t find it, as well as manage to wake the Whale up and ride it. Paika has now been accepted as the next “Whale Rider”. She has proven that she has what it takes to complete the ritual. She now has the support of her whole family, including her grandpa. At the end of the movie she does the ritual in front of the entire community, while the men of the village push a boat into the ocean. She completes the ritual when they get to the boat and are on the ocean. In the movie The Whale Rider it clear shoes all the stages of the Hero’s Journey and how Paika accomplished it. Paika has many challenges during the way and managed to complete all of them with the help of guardians. She also was able to convince her grandfather that is doesn’t matter if you are a boy or a girl, you can be what you are destined to

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